IDB wants Jamaica to go fully digital – Turner-Jones
WESTERN BUREAU:
HERESA TURNER-JONES, general manager for the Inter-American Development Bank Caribbean Country Department, has said steps are being taken to ensure that Jamaica operates on a digital platform where everyone will have their own digital identity.
“My goal for Jamaica in the first instance is to see Jamaica reach the level of a country like Estonia,
Twhere the entire country operates on a digital platform,”Turner-Jones said, while speaking to local and international tech innovators and creators at the fourth staging of the Jamaica edition of Tech Beach Retreat in Montego Bay last weekend.
“A digital platform where there is no paper in the Cabinet Office and there is a way to connect everything you need. I could be sitting in my office and check, in real-time, the schoolwork of my daughter in her classroom, in real-time, by just logging in with my digital identification,” added Turner-Jones.
According to the IDB official, the absence of a digital platform has forced Jamaicans and other Caribbean nationals to stand in long lines to transact public service business.
“We are nowhere near that [digital platform] yet, but we want to be there because Jamaicans do not want to stand in a line for an hour to do any transaction, that’s a fact,” noted Turner-Jones, who has portfolio responsibilities for IDB’s operations in Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.
“That’s how long it takes for the average interaction between a Jamaican and the public service [provider]. It’s not that different in other Caribbean countries, but in the case of Jamaica, it is not just one visit, it can take you three visits to get one transaction done,” said Turner-Jones.
“So our job in working with the [Jamaican] Government here is to convince everybody that this is a completely inefficient way to deliver services to the public.” Turner-Jones added.
The IDB’s goal and financial push towards using technology to move Jamaica from analogue into becoming a digital country come just days following another sustained pitch made by National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang, who said the revised national identification system (NIDS) bill will safeguard and protect Jamaicans.
On December 3, Chang insisted that birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and other forms of identity have no place in the modern world because of their vulnerability. He was addressing a delegation of experts from Latin America and the Caribbean at the inaugural staging of a United States-led cybersecurity and cybercrime workshop in Montego Bay.
The technology-driven NIDS is being promoted by the Government as a game-changing and cutting-edge identification system that would ease business and give greater state accountability. The initial attempt to install the National Identification and Registration Act, which underpinned NIDS, was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court earlier this year.