The past week saw the for­mal launch of T&T’s Tech­Lab, an In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank ini­tia­tive along the lines of its first in­no­va­tion cen­tre set up in Wash­ing­ton in 2017. The aim is to cre­ate con­di­tions for in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions to ex­per­i­ment and de­vel­op in­no­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies and get the re­gion firm­ly in the dig­i­tal era. So far, so good—and we must make the most of the new fa­cil­i­ties to help us tru­ly move in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry and en­sure that we are not left be­hind in the dig­i­tal world.

Ac­tu­al­ly, this was a key mes­sage from the IDB’s se­nior ex­ec­u­tive re­spon­si­ble for tech­nol­o­gy and trans­for­ma­tion, Jean-Michel Bau­doin, dur­ing his vis­it to T&T.

Mr Bau­doin in­di­cat­ed that, for T&T and the re­gion to have a chance of mak­ing this much-need­ed dig­i­tal leap, we first need to get a few ba­sic things right: make con­nec­tiv­i­ty uni­ver­sal, pro­vide dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy, en­sure the right lev­el of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is in place, and cre­ate the right reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work.

It is all very sen­si­ble, and, as Mr Bau­doin al­so point­ed out, we can play catch-up even if oth­er parts of the world are well ahead of us, as things like dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy and cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty re­main an is­sue for even some of the most dig­i­tal­ly ad­vanced na­tions in the world. But for us to get there, we need to get things go­ing more rapid­ly than now.

As far as dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy is con­cerned, it is shock­ing that we are still nowhere near a co­her­ent and mod­ern school cur­ricu­lum de­signed to pre­pare stu­dents for the dig­i­tal world they are al­ready in­hab­it­ing. This will not on­ly hin­der their job prospects but al­so se­ri­ous­ly com­pro­mise T&T’s fu­ture, as poor dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy and skills will put us at an enor­mous com­pet­i­tive dis­ad­van­tage just as we need (and will have) to di­ver­si­fy even more quick­ly away from oil and gas as our pri­ma­ry rev­enue earn­er.

So much is said about so­cial jus­tice or the need for more eq­ui­ty in our coun­try, but know­ing­ly fail­ing to pro­vide every child with the right lev­el of dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy will be not on­ly moral­ly un­ac­cept­able but ut­ter­ly so­cial­ly un­just for gen­er­a­tions to come. Then comes the Gov­ern­ment.

To be fair, some progress has been made to­wards turn­ing the way the state op­er­ates in­to some­thing a bit more dig­i­tal, al­though we re­main a long way away even from mod­er­ate­ly mod­ernised coun­tries, let alone e-gov­ern­ment su­per­pow­ers like Es­to­nia. And we are al­so just too slow. Re­spond­ing to a re­cent me­dia en­quiry, the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion pro­vid­ed an up­date on its de­vel­op­ment of a re­mote work pol­i­cy for state em­ploy­ees, with a strat­e­gy for its im­ple­men­ta­tion ex­pect­ed to be ready with­in the sec­ond quar­ter of this year.

In oth­er words, about five years since the COVID pan­dem­ic start­ed and forced busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ments all over the world to im­ple­ment work-from-home poli­cies and pro­to­cols, we are yet to have a long-term one for our coun­try’s pub­lic sec­tor.

Iron­i­cal­ly, it has tak­en us so long that what we are see­ing now is ex­act­ly the op­po­site, with a grow­ing num­ber of busi­ness­es around the world de­mand­ing that their em­ploy­ees re­turn to the of­fice full-time or scale back their days work­ing from home.

But there might be an un­for­tu­nate but valid rea­son for our slow re­sponse: the fact that many of the state’s doc­u­ments and process­es are still so pa­per-based may be mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for the Gov­ern­ment to ef­fec­tive­ly op­er­ate with­out pub­lic ser­vants be­ing in the of­fice.

Well, to be more ac­cu­rate: the Gov­ern­ment may not be able to func­tion with many of its em­ploy­ees work­ing re­mote­ly at least as bad­ly as it does now due to its ad­dic­tion to pa­per doc­u­ments, stamps, and sig­na­tures that is more aligned with the 1920s than the 2020s.

In a coun­try still heav­i­ly re­liant on pa­per doc­u­ments and more at ease with cheques than elec­tron­ic trans­fers (and that ap­plies to both busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ment), we have a very high dig­i­tal moun­tain to climb. But, if we do climb it, the re­wards can be con­sid­er­able. We have a rea­son­ably well-ed­u­cat­ed pop­u­la­tion (at least when it comes to ba­sic lit­er­a­cy and nu­mer­a­cy), and we speak a glob­al lan­guage that forms the ba­sis of the dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

We al­so have a large and suc­cess­ful di­as­po­ra, many of them al­ready do­ing well in the dig­i­tal world. If we man­age to rapid­ly mod­ernise how we work and op­er­ate, fo­cus on the dig­i­tal up­skilling of the cur­rent work­force, and rad­i­cal­ly change our school cur­ricu­lum to re­flect the needs of a trans­formed world, we ab­solute­ly can make our­selves the dig­i­tal lead­ers of the Caribbean, lead­ing to more busi­ness­es and more jobs.

If we don’t, rest as­sured oth­er coun­tries will, and we will be much poor­er for that—in re­al terms and metaphor­i­cal­ly speak­ing. In­vest­ing time, ed­u­ca­tion and re­sources to make T&T a dig­i­tal leader in the re­gion and be­yond is a no-brain­er to en­sure we can con­tin­ue to eco­nom­i­cal­ly thrive in the fu­ture, be­come more ef­fi­cient across all sec­tors, help us tack­le cor­rup­tion (a pa­per-based gov­ern­ment is mu­sic to the ears of cor­rupt of­fi­cials), and har­ness the im­mense cre­ative in­tel­li­gence this coun­try has.

We need to take a leaf from the en­thu­si­asm and faith put on us by peo­ple like Jean-Michel Bau­doin and the IDB, even when many of our grand plans of the past few decades turned in­to flops or white ele­phants.