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Trust in government, inefficiency and long wait times to complete a single transaction are among critical factors identified by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), as Jamaica falls woefully behind other Caribbean and Latin American countries in digital connectivity.

Francesco De Simone, Senior State Modernisation Specialist at the IDB in Jamaica, broke down the disappointing figures at the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica’s (PSOJ) ‘Roadmap to Jamaica 2.0’ economic committee forum on Wednesday (June 16).

While the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had a tremendous impact on countries in adapting and meeting demands for digitised options to access key services, at current rates, Jamaica is unable to satisfy those needs.

De Simone said widespread regional distrust in public institutions is the first and arguably biggest hurdle as governments would need to speed up the adoption of digital services, internet connectivity, digital literacy and financial inclusion.

“The proportion of the population that felt sharing their personal data in digital interactions entailed more risk than benefits were pretty staggering; from almost 90 per cent in Ecuador and 70 per cent in El Salvador. These are percentages of people who said they didn’t feel comfortable sharing their information online [and] if there’s something that’s going to slow down [digital] adoption it’s certainly this and we have seen this in Jamaica fairly clearly,” De Simone explained.

“Our research shows that there is a positive correlation between generalised trust and digital development—the more trust [there is] in a society, the more likely you are to use digital services. The correlation we also found with e-government services,” he said.

“The effect of trust on the uptake of e-commerce and digital services is 61 per cent greater than the effect of education level and nearly four times the effect of income. It means that [one’s] level of trust in institutions or interpersonal trust, is a bigger driver of the adoption of digital services than your income and how educated you are,” the IDB senior state modernisation specialist added.

Of the five Caribbean countries analysed in 2019, the IDB found that Jamaica had the third-highest wait time to complete a single government transaction.

Against the region’s 4.3-hour average, it takes Jamaicans roughly 4.1 hours to do business with the government. Wait times are shorter in the Bahamas (2.8 hours) and Trinidad and Tobago (3.9), while it takes much longer to complete similar government transactions in Barbados (4.8) and Guyana (5.9).

Elsewhere in Latin America, time to complete government business still needs improvement, such as in Bolivia, where it takes 11 hours.

Jamaica, with 11 per cent of government transactions completed on average in one visit to an in-person entity, is the worst in Latin America, according to the IDB.

Barbados was the second-worst at 23 per cent, and the Bahamas ranked as the best in the Caribbean (at 51 per cent), equalling the Latin America average.

Jamaica was also the worst in the region as some 45 per cent of respondents said they were only able to complete a government transaction on the third or later visit.

The situation was equally as bad in Barbados and the Bahamas, where 43 and 36 per cent respectively needed more than one visit to finalise a single government transaction.

The island’s inefficiencies were laid bare by the IDB, as only four per cent of Jamaicans used a fully or partially digital channel to carry out government transactions.

Ranked against 22 other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Jamaica was the joint fourth-worst in this regard regionally, alongside Guyana and Guatemala.

De Simone pointed to more work needed in Jamaica, as only 16.8 per cent of government transactions could be started online. Even fewer services are completed there. The island, the only Caribbean representative in the category, ranked eighth among 17 Latin American countries.

The IDB indicated that Jamaicans had the second-lowest bribe rate of the surveyed Caribbean countries, with some 17 per cent of citizens having been asked to pay extra to expedite a government transaction.

Only Barbados, with nine per cent, had a better record, with Trinidad (17 per cent), The Bahamas (20 per cent) and Guyana (27 per cent) making the Caribbean bribe list.

Jamaica’s only good representation regionally was with the evolution of Doing Business rankings, which sees the island placing sixth in the world in 2019.

It has been a consistent improvement for Jamaica, as the island has gone from 20th in the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings in 2008, to its most current placing.

A more recent IDB survey of 9,200 public officials in Latin American and Caribbean countries found that the lack of digital tools was a bigger challenge than budgetary issues when managing the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think it is a huge piece of information. What it’s telling us is that people from the region are saying ‘Our problems are not so much the lack of financial resources, but we don’t have the right digital tools’,” he said.

The pandemic’s impact and a need for more robust digital solutions were immediately felt in Latin American and the Caribbean, De Simone noted, as some 40 per cent of IDB respondents said they had done their last government transaction online recently.

Before the pandemic, only 21 per cent of respondents had completed that process digitally.

Aside from the ease of service, De Simone argued that there is a financial plus to a digital transition for governments in Latin America and the Caribbean—as they are cheaper and 74 per cent faster.