Towards a Digital Society

The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) descended on Trinidad and Tobago last month for its 49th annual board meeting, giving Caribbean leaders a chance to talk tech. Digital transformation was high on the agenda for the conference, which welcomed experts in the field to give guidance on how Caribbean life can be transformed by following the examples of smart nations around the world.

What is a digital society?

The term ‘digital society’ is creeping into regional discussions as policymakers look at ways to make the public sector more effective and efficient, but what does a digital society actually look like? 

A digital society is one in which data is shared, used and collected online to make tasks such as banking, voting and registering businesses quicker and more efficient. Waiting in line for hours to renew your driver’s licence, carrying three sets of documents to three different government agencies, applying for tax credit only to find that your application has been mislaid — every Caribbean citizen knows the discomfort and hassle of dealing with government bureaucracy. A digital society would eradicate these time-consuming and stressful obstacles through platforms that are secure, safe and streamlined.

There are plenty of examples of countries around the world who are adopting digitalisation but leading the pack is Estonia. This small European nation, with a population roughly the size of Trinidad and Tobago, has 600 e-services available to citizens, more than 2,400 e-services available to businesses and has taken 99% of its public services online. The Estonia government estimates that it has saved each citizen one week every year by switching to digital services. Estonians can vote, file their taxes, register for child support, renew their driver’s licence and more, with just one click. 

Calum Cameron, of Estonian digital consulting firm Proud Engineers, delivered the keynote address at the CDB conference and told attendees that the Caribbean can follow in Estonia’s footprints. “Don’t reinvent the wheel; copy what others have done,” he said. “Take their lessons and leapfrog them to take the lead in the digital space . . . not to build like-to-like — tech moves on — but to adopt the principles and the lessons.”

Aside from Estonia, the places that are making the most progress in the digital space, according to Cameron, are the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Hong Kong. These countries all have one thing in common — like Caribbean states, they are small enough to be nimble, flexible and innovative. And they’ve already done the hard work, giving Caribbean leaders a template for how to proceed. “Until other nations develop the ability and the willingness to experiment, they are going to struggle to compete for the future,” said Cameron. “Smaller countries, agile nations, who are prepared to take a bit of a risk can jump out way ahead and work out these business models before the bigger nations get in there.

“Dream about your digital future, think about the basics, copy what you can from others that have already done it so you don’t waste time, learn from their mistakes and jump ahead of them.”

The Caribbean context

Jumping ahead of digital nations such as Estonia may seem like a far-fetched concept for the Caribbean where some citizens don’t have access to the internet, let alone a platform from which they can pay their bills online. The region has a lot of work ahead if it is to build a truly digital society. 

The CDB has outlined a four-step plan for digitalisation: embed digital skills and literacy among the population, enhance the ICT and digital infrastructure, strengthen legislation and regulation, and expedite digitalisation of government services. Speaking of the importance of creating a digital society, CDB President Dr William Warren Smith said: “Digital transformation is indispensible. It will change the way we live, consume and produce. Harnessing digital power is equivalent to securing our future.”

There are already signs of small, but significant, progress being made around the region. In Barbados, where cabinet meetings have gone entirely paperless, the Town and Country Planning department now has an e-planning platform where people can file their applications online as part of the country’s modernisation initiative, supported by the Inter-American Development Bank. “We have to take ourselves less seriously as government,” said Barbados Minister of Economic Affairs and Investment Marsha Caddle. “Governments have a very big role [but] we have to see ourselves more as a facilitator, as a service provider.

“We are talking about making it easier for every part of government to be accessible to everyone. A lot of these solutions are technology solutions. It is not that we started by saying ‘we want a digitalised government’, but we looked at what we were doing and thought that in order to deliver this in a more efficient way, we will have to make it accessible online. This is not just about building platforms, it is that this process allows governments to modernise everything we do.”

In Trinidad and Tobago, private e-payment platform WiPay collaborated with the judiciary to allow users to settle maintenance payments, fines, fees, filing and ticket payments online. The money is transferred electronically from a payee’s smartphone directly into the Court Pay System, and the government hopes to eventually expand the platform into other areas of the public sector. WiPay CEO Aldwyn Wayne commented that transitioning in this way requires a significant shift that takes time.

“Our culture is slighty different from the rest of the world and our government is part of this culture. We need to take baby steps. These incremental steps towards the end game of total digitalisation would allow governments to give innovators the environment to innovate.”

In a recent interview, Priit Tohver, adviser for e-services and innovation at the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs said: “We have a lot to be proud of, even on an international level, like a fully functional e-prescription, smart support for discovering the co-effects of medicine, e-ambulance and a developing e-consultation service. Even a digital registration that works across the country is now working and more and more hospitals are connecting to it.”