IDB Government Transformation in Jamaica
Remarks
By
The Most Honorable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
At the
IDB Hosted Event
Jamaica: The Road To Digital Government
At the
AC Hotel By Mariott
On
May 31, 2023
Thank you, Master of Ceremonies, Leader of the Opposition Mr. Mark Golding, Senator Dr The Honourable Dana Morris Dixon- it gives me such great pleasure to just roll that off- our new Minister without Portfolio with responsibility for Skills and Digital Transformation. I thought about having you deliver the speech this morning, but I saw my good friend and believe me, he is, the Leader of the Opposition made a statement about technology and I thought it would be such a good opportunity, Mark to respond to you. I note your position in the room. Other Members of the Cabinet, I see Senator Hill here with us. Chief Justice, it is good to see you sir. I know that you are an advocate for the integration of technology into the business of government and justice as well.
Members of the Diplomatic Corps, Permanent Secretaries, Mr. Tariq Alli, General Manager of the Caribbean Country Department/ Country Representative for Jamaica and members of IDB Jamaica, stakeholders of public and private sector organizations and civil society who are here, media representatives, ladies and gentlemen- good morning. It is my pleasure to speak here this morning at this International Development Bank (IDB) event discussing the topic, ‘Jamaica: The Road Towards Digital Government.’ I thank the IDB for providing this opportunity for us to have dialogue about this extremely important objective for the development of our country. I also wish to publicly recognize and thank the IDB for their continued support to Jamaica and being such wonderful strategic partners on our journey for continued growth and development for our people.
So ladies and gentlemen, what is digital transformation? Some persons say it is about technology- that very broad phrase- and others say it’s the Internet, it’s AI, it’s the metaverse, it’s ChatGPT and its other variants, it’s Bard, it’s cryptocurrency and so forth but others will tell you it’s about rethinking how institutions both public and private deliver their services. How they meet their mandate, how they remain relevant and still others will tell you that it is about convenience that technology is not about itself, but rather how it can make the lives of individuals easier. So it’s a utility; how it saves time and how it saves money. So I would not say that any of the perspectives are wrong, they’re all a dimension of technology. But let me share with you my vision in terms of what I see for my Jamaican family when I think of digital transformation in practical terms. I see a mother who needs to enroll in some government programme, let’s take the PATH Programme for example, and in order for her to do that presently, she would have to wait in a line, possibly a long line somewhere, possibly facing the elements somewhere. I see a pensioner who has to provide a “proof of life” certificate and that is exactly what it says it is. To get your pension, you have to establish that yes, I am alive and in order to get that proof of life certificate, you have to go to a Justice of the Peace to verify that yes, you are who you say you are and that yes, you are alive and you have to do this on a regular basis. I see the budding entrepreneur who wants to sell his goods and services overseas while remaining here in Jamaica. I also see the freshly minted public servant who has joined the government straight out of university and wants to play her part in the economic growth and transformation of our country.
For me, digital transformation – and specifically digital government – is a means to an end. Ultimately, digital transformation is about improving the lives of people. So I share more the utility perspective of technology and it’s important that I say that because there are those who believe that we are worshiping technology and that technology is in itself what we are trying to force on people, it’s a very important distinction that has to be made whenever we speak about technology in a society that is skeptical from the beginning. It is about making government services more accessible to all of us, particularly for those with the greatest needs. It is about reduced administrative burdens for companies.
It is about empowering public officers to maximize their talents for the benefit of the people. It is about providing and delivering better services to our people, increasing our communication with our citizens and customers, and serving our citizens’, customers’ needs by providing better and improved experiences when they do business with us.
Importantly, it is about inclusion. Digital transformation can be a powerful equalizer through enabling financial and educational inclusion. But first, we must ensure there is digital inclusion by eliminating the digital divide. Your government has been working hard to achieve our long-term objective of digital access for every Jamaican as a public good. While we still have quite some way to go to achieving this, we are making good progress with building out our national broadband system and community WiFi spots.
I saw the Leader of the Opposition gladly welcoming his Wi-Fi spot in his constituency, expanding access right across Jamaica and I depart from my script briefly because technology is so ubiquitous these days, it’s all around us and the very people who spread a gospel against technology, they are using technology to spread rumours and lies and misinformation about technology. In other words, the very technology that they criticize is the very technology that they are using to enable their mischief. I just thought I’d point that out.
Digital transformation will increase financial inclusion, enhance transparency, efficiency and productivity. This has been the tangible result in countries like India and Estonia where they embarked on their transformation many years ago and have reaped the rewards. I expect Jamaica to have similar results if not better results. Over the last seven years, we have made significant progress and several online services and initiatives have been successfully implemented throughout the government.
The NHT online platform allows its customers to apply for an NHT refund, request a mortgage statement, make their NHT contribution and mortgage payments, check their payment history online, view their loan balances and query their personal information as well as their contribution and employment history and apply for advertised housing scheme solutions. The most recent service placed online by the NHT is allowing customers to access eligibility letters all done through technology.
Now, I share with you what I consider a joke. There’s someone who is close to me who is always complaining about how difficult it is to use technology to interface with technology, whether it is to interface at the ATM or to use the computer interface, but every 1st of January she is the first person to submit via her small screen telephone for her NHT refund using the technology; and of course, she praises how efficient it is, how convenient it is, she doesn’t have to go into any office, but when it comes to dealing with banking and other things that require her using the technology, she’s very reluctant but it just shows you the nature of our society.
At the RGD, customers can use its online platform to access thirteen (13) services, including applications for birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates and adoption certificates and the RGD continues to bring more and more of its services online and are currently working on placing online services and I had a discussion with them about this to see whether or not this service will actually take off, but I believe it will, that they are now going to put online the online services for drafting and recording wills and believe me, this is a very important service.
In fact, presently people do go to the RGD physically to document their will, but can you imagine if this service is more convenient and more accessible what it will do to ensure property rights and the proper documentation of property transfers by inheritance? It would be profound how it would impact society.
The Jamaica Promotions Corporation, better known as (JAMPRO) recently launched the ‘Jamaica Business Gateway’ platform. This will enable members of the public and private sectors to easily access the essential services related to government processes required for business development. The portal will revolutionize the way businesses apply for and track various permits, licences and approvals from the government.
We have implemented the traffic e-ticketing system and are in the process of implementing a digital station records management system for the Jamaica Constabulary Force. This will eliminate the “big book”. I don’t think many of you would’ve gone to a police station to have anything recorded and the first thing that you have to give is a report. The policeman on duty has to take your statement and let me tell you, it is a skill that still should be preserved. The art of writing, physically writing out that statement. It is almost calligraphy and they do it very well because after 150 years that skill would’ve been embedded in our police officers but the problem with it, of course, is that this incredible “book of life” I call it, that has all of this information, the information cannot be mined. You can’t make correlations between what happened in station X versus station Y. So you could have a criminal committing acts and being reported all across the country, but because you don’t know what is in the station book in Constant Spring versus what is in the station book in Montego Bay, you may not be able to make connections. Digitizing that will bring
everything into one database for which you can pull relevant information that will assist in ultimately making the society safer.
Many other agencies like Tax Administration Jamaica, PICA and the Customs Agency, among many others have all started to place their services online. So in the coming months, you’re going to see far more services being offered to our citizens online, all in an effort to ease the pain points to make your life easier. I tell you that it was reported to me that there was a long line at PICA and we’ve been getting several complaints about people not being able to get their passport renewed or issued in a timely fashion and there are some issues there and one young man came out of the passport office and he said loudly, “A Andrew fault why mi can’t get mi passport!”
Now, poor me, I’m distance away from PICA and their system but I understand what he’s saying. As the Prime Minister, I’m ultimately responsible for everything and that’s how Jamaicans see the role of their prime minister. It’s your favourite person to “cuss” and your favourite person to love; it’s that kind of relationship but it was profound because a lady took him on.
As I said, favourite person to “cuss”, favourite person to love and she said, “Gweh! Weh you cuss the minister bout? Nuh you say yuh nuh want technology?”
I just found that to be so, you know, it was funny but yet profound that as much as the society appears to be divided, the society understands that we need to integrate technology in what we are doing but we need to bring the other side of the conversation along that integrating technology, Chief Justice, will not remove your rights and freedoms, that how we integrate technology must protect your rights and freedoms.
So in other words, it is not an exchange of convenience for less rights and freedoms and I think if that message were to get across, then we would move much faster in the adoption of technology. I think that is the real challenge, how to get – and it’s a challenge not just here, it’s in the developed world, it’s in the developing world, it’s all over. How do we embrace technology but give the assurance that your right to privacy, your right to your self-determination, your right to be different will not be taken away because we are saying it’s going to be convenient for everybody?
So we have also made strong progress on our digital flagship initiative which is the Digital Identification System which will give every Jamaican the opportunity to have their own digital identification and digital signature. This is the most fundamental building block that will unlock our digital potential.
If you think about conducting transactions with the government or even with a private company, one of the main reasons that they require you to be present physically is to authenticate you; that is to establish that you are you. The Digital ID will solve this problem and enable you to be authenticated remotely.
In other words, services would be able to be delivered without you being present. Now just think about it; to be present requires so many things to come together that have a stream of costs associated with them. You know, right now, to start the PATH application process, that mother who I spoke about earlier, she would have to visit a PATH office of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security. That of course means she has to find out where the office is located and she has to go to the office during working hours which may coincide with her working hours. Path offices are not all around the island, there are a set number of offices strategically located nonetheless, but you’re not going to be able to say there is an office a mile away from the home of every Jamaican so there is going to be a considerable transportation line of cost which that mother would have to incur. But eventually, she will have to furnish documents so she will have to go and get identity documents and that is another line of cost. It may very well be that she would end up in a line at PICA trying to get her passport or waiting in an office somewhere trying to get some documents signed off by a JP. Now think about those costs and if you wonder why there is this sense of, you know, Jamaica is such a hard place to live, that’s a part of the pain point, that you want to get the service but government can’t just say, come and here it is because when we go to Parliament, you have the Auditor General, you have the PAAC.
During the pandemic, Chief Justice, we had an emergency case in St. Mary where we had to declare an area and quarantine the area and we had to give out food. The Ministry of Labour and Social Security was given that task and we had to ask the persons who were giving food for identification, I’ll never forget it, Leader of the Opposition. The opposition member stood up in parliament and said, “What a wicked act! People are hungry and suffering and you’re asking them for ID?” And I tended to agree with him that in the emergency, there should be some special dispensation, but that is not the case these days, it can’t be. Every dollar of the government’s resources must be accounted for. And I want you to just stop for a moment and consider that this administration going through this epiphenomenal event of a pandemic has spent billions of dollars through the CARE Programme, not one question about the accountability of the resources, not one question.
We have had emergencies before. For those of you who are Jamaican and who were around in 1988 when we had Hurricane Gilbert and we had a whole lot of zinc coming into the country, and yes, it’s an emergency distribution, but do you recall what happened after that? We have changed right before your very eyes and how were we able to do this-to deliver care to the people without questioning the integrity of the process- it is because we employed technology. The same people who complained about the electronic interface went on their phones and applied for the benefits and we were able to match them with other databases to establish identity. So, technology works. It does make the society, the delivery of service more convenient, but it adds accountability even in emergency situations. So as a taxpayer, you should embrace government utilizing technology.
Now, imagine an alternative reality where our PATH mother could go on her phone. In today’s world, you just type in ‘how do I register for PATH?” And you can do that on Google or on Chat GPT and it will give you a very succinct explanation and you follow those steps, it takes you to the website, you enter your data but let’s get to the identity part because that is the real crux of the matter. In this alternative reality, she would have her national identification card, her NIN, and she would be able to put that in and that is all that would be required to authenticate digitally. She doesn’t have to go into an office. She doesn’t have to take a bus. She doesn’t have to go to a JP. Once that is established, she could wait until she comes in from work, put her children to bed. She doesn’t have to be confined to the office hours of the PATH Programme. She doesn’t have to deal with a PATH agent who may have woken up on the wrong side that day; convenience, utility, accountability.
So are we at that point now where this can be widespread in society? No, we are not there yet but we are on our way and we must get there. We must get to this level of efficiency in our society where we can remove the pain points that make living in Jamaica sometimes such a distress. It shouldn’t be that you have to line up for a long time to get your police records, that any interaction you’re doing with government, you have to provide the same documents over and over and over again. To go to the bank to do a financial transaction, the volume of information that is required, it’s as if they don’t want you to do business with them, but it is the law. It is what we require in order to be able to function in the global financial system so in a sense, there is an inevitability that we have to get our digital systems in order.
So we will get there. We will get to a point when the NIS pensioner does not need to go to the JP every two months or so to have this proof of life certificate signed to get their pension. What a great convenience that would be for our pensioners. Let’s consider that what the pensioner gets now, which is something that we will have to address and we have plans to do that in the near future, the cost that you have to take out of the pension in order to get the pension just for identity authentication.
Ladies and gentlemen, other than remote authentication with digital ID, which digital ID will solve this issue of remote authentication, the other big barrier to transacting is that too many Jamaicans do not have a bank account or any other facility to make digital payments. They, therefore, have to travel long distances to stand in line simply to receive cash or to pay money.
Now, I saw some things circulating on the internet and my good friend, the Leader of the Opposition, is among those who have circulated and I’m being very polite, euphemistic; circulated concerns about digital payments. There is no attempt by the government to remove cash; meaning paper money from the system.
Just stop for one moment. Just be rational. Why would the government spend billions of dollars to change currency to a new durable banknote that we don’t have to be changing it ever so often, only to turn around and take it out of the system? Don’t you see it is stupidness? But the number of people who have followed it gets me worried about what Jamaicans are consuming as information. I am worried! Where is our reasoning and why is it so simple for us to be attracted by rumours?
As your prime minister, I have a duty to call it out when I see it. We have spent money to put in place a new durable note that accounts for the inflation in the society, the convenience of the notes that you need to make payment and then to just turn around and say no? Come on. It’s stupid. Pardon my departure from calmness but I have to call it out.
There is no mandate to be cashless. We understand that and this morning I was looking at a very interesting Twitter post with someone saying, “With digital currency, government can restrict your transactions, with digital currency government could get up today and say no more, you can’t do any business.”
Yes, there are concerns about digital currencies but you have central bank digital currencies and you have many other digital currencies that are whatever we feel about it, there is a market for digital currencies and people are investing in the technology and in the currency themselves.
Why? Because of the convenience. The same threat that exists with digital currencies, some of the same threats exist with cash. We have seen the situation in India, for example, where the government decided that they are going to dematerialize some notes. It’s the same threat that could happen with a digital currency. The issue is what are our laws to protect our consumers, that is what we must ask about and not fear of the technology. And I can say with the Chief Justice here that I am certain that our laws will be very strong and the laws that we have in place are indeed getting stronger to protect your rights.
There’s this false notion that anonymity guarantees privacy. Privacy is only guaranteed by the laws of the country you are in so I would want the conversation to be more focused on how do we straighten our laws to make sure that we protect rights and that is where the focus of this government will be and that’s where we have always been. And that is why we have a very strong parliament where the Opposition has been very strong on the point about protecting privacy and ensuring that the laws are constitutional and we have been very strong on that as well in putting in place the laws to ensure that that happens but this unnecessary and unreasonable and very dangerous trend that is emerging to keep Jamaica out of being on the cutting edge of development. And as I said, it’s very hypocritical because the same people who are trying to prevent you from using technology are using technology. When you see them post, tell them to come off TikTok, come off Twitter and go and talk in the town square.
We have launched JAMDEX, our central bank digital currency, and there are a couple of banks that have launched or are in the process of launching digital wallets. As the national ID is fully rolled out, we will be giving increased focus to our national digital payments infrastructure.
I give you an example of something. I went to Kenya, our brother country in the motherland and it was just an amazing thing to see that people in remote parts of Kenya have embraced technology. Their payment is digital. You would just see average Kenyans going into their supermarket and punching upon their phones and making payments. When I asked one Kenyan who was assigned to me as my driver, he explained that he sends his money to his mother who lives in a remote part, almost close to the desert, and he sends to her digitally and she goes to the supermarket and uses her phone. What are we saying, that we shouldn’t have this convenience as well? Is this going to bring the end of times? Ridiculous!
I went to Rwanda and Rwanda is even more advanced. They basically conduct most of their transactions digitally and it is a very progressive society and part of the reason why their society is so progressive, Chief Justice, I believe a team went to look at their technology in justice is that their people have embraced it; black people like us but they are wise enough not to be caught in conspiracy theories and embrace the future. I just had to say it.
So, I know many persons are uncertain how this will work, and you have opportunists and political entrepreneurs who will seek to take advantage of uncertainty and sow fear and conspiracy theories among the population. I want to take the opportunity to assure everyone that:
● Neither the Digital ID nor digital currency will be mandatory. There will be no compulsion to use them. As I described earlier, the reason we are implementing these things is to make the lives of citizens easier. If you choose to use them, hooray to you. If you choose not to use them it is your choice.
● There will be strong safeguards to ensure that your personal data and information is properly secured and used only for the
purposes that the citizen has provided it.
● No one will be left behind. We know that many persons are not “digital natives” and will require assistance and support in
conducting transactions online and interfacing with technology. So we have started to put together a strategy as to how we will help persons who may find it difficult in using devices or manipulating
websites so we will have to do some training and support for those people who choose to, who want to be involved in this digital
transformation.
● And we’re going to be using our network of Post Offices across the island to become “Digital Service Centres” to provide hands-on support.
Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Transformation has been and continues to be a priority of this administration. While we have made significant progress, the pace at which digital transformation is moving globally means that we have to accelerate our own transformation. This is why I recently appointed a new Cabinet Minister, Senator Dr The Honourable Dana Morris Dixon, who has been given direct oversight for Skills and Digital Transformation.
I now want to share with you two additional efforts underway.
The first is the development of our first-ever national digital government strategy. This strategy document, currently under development, will serve as a guide for the whole-of-government approach to digital transformation. It will set ambitious but realistic targets about how we can harness digitization to achieve the things we all care about, like greater competitiveness, greater social inclusion and greater value for money. It will also detail the institutional upgrading that we must undertake to deliver on our ambitious goals. I look forward to the completion of this strategy in the next several months.
The second is the launch of the ICT Authority. In every leading digital country in the world – from Estonia to the United Kingdom to Uruguay to Korea – there is an institution that drives digital transformation from the center. For Jamaica, this will be the ICT Authority. This institution, which already exists in law, will be similar to the Government Digital Services in the United Kingdom. In fact, some persons are encouraging us to re-brand the ICT Authority as the “Jamaica Digital Services” to reflect the service
orientation that the institution must have. The Jamaica Digital Service, I’m not saying we have rebranded it, but I’m just rolling with the words, will be home to a series of cross-government tools that make digital transformation at scale- meaning right across the government- a reality.
These tools include a single government domain which we have partially but not fully, a data exchange platform, a payments platform, a notifications service and many more. We have a great advantage of promoting this at this time as there are open-source versions of all these tools, already designed and tested by other countries, which we can have access to, adopt and adapt.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a wonderful and exciting time to participate in the development of Jamaica for the benefit of our people. It is a time to be a part of the solution to address our many challenges. Jamaica is experiencing a remarkable economic rebound from the pandemic. Our economy remains on a strong growth trajectory and I must say this, with
inflation trending down.
I noticed that Minister Hill led the clap.
Inflation always has a kind of lag effect on its way down. On its way up, the impacts are almost immediate, it just wipes out income, it takes a little time to come back down but more than that, it takes a longer time for incomes to adjust. So on the back end of inflation, people are really hit hard. Coming out of COVID where people lost income, people lost employment and then to be hit by inflation, it’s a miserable time for households, miserable time for people who have fixed income, miserable time for people who are unemployed with no income. The government understands this. We understand this. We understand the pressure that people are feeling right across Jamaica.
There could be two responses. One, we could just throw caution to the wind and spend capriciously but that wouldn’t solve the problem because one-off transfers are not going to be sufficient to return purchasing power when you are in a long-term period of inflation, a year or more. The strategy has to be how do we get income levels up? How do we increase productivity to sustain the increased level of income and how do we get that productivity and that increased motivation from an increased income to translate into economic growth?
Whatever criticisms are levelled at the government, one that cannot be levelled is that we have managed this economy the best that any other government of Jamaica has ever managed the economy to recover from a global threat.
It may not mean anything to you presently, but in the near future, as the economy adjusts, as the new minimum wage takes effect, as the increased pensions that we announce take effect- and they have to be further increased, I’m aware of that, as the new wage levels take effect and are increased, you’re going to see a massive change for the better.
The other problems that we have are the pain points that people experience, collection of garbage, public transportation, and interfacing with government services that add to the misery index. We have started with making investments in the collection of garbage. We have investments in place to increase the number of buses. The strategies that we have put in place and the new legislation in place regarding transportation and road traffic and the ticketing system will bring greater order to public transportation and reduce the difficulties that people have.
There are other pain points, for example, water. There’s not much we can do about that in the near term. We have a drought and we have to manage the drought but the infrastructure is being put in place to ensure that we can deal with those pain points. So I think it’s very important that in the context of this inflationary period, which has wiped out incomes and placed households in a disadvantageous situation where people lose hope, it is important to point out to them the proper narrative to counter the negative narrative that opportunists and political entrepreneurs will try to use as the dominant description of the situation, which may make people take perverse decisions, decisions that are not in their best interest.
We have been this pathway before. Jamaicans do not make the same mistakes. The people who tell you they can do better have never done better when they have been given the opportunity. It is the reality. So our economy remains on a strong growth trajectory with inflation trending down and with our foreign exchange market remaining relatively stable.
And by the way, that’s another achievement. When have you seen this in Jamaica? Massive inflation-exchange rate remains stable. And by the way, this is a freely floating exchange rate, so everybody who is jumping up and talking all kinds of nonsense, these are the facts with which you must contend. So, we are on the Road to Digital Government. A journey that will have a positive impact on the development of our economy and people. Let us redouble our efforts.
I look forward to the presentation of the Government Digital Transformation Guide by our friends at the Inter-American Development Bank. I trust the guide will provide further insights on how best to continue on this exciting journey.
Ladies and gentlemen, I do not expect the road ahead to be easy. Some statistics recently generated by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) give us an indication of the magnitude of the challenge: Only 13% of Jamaicans report having used the internet to access a public service in the past year, only 13% so we have a long way to go; 60% of people 60 or older say that they do not feel adapted to the digital world and half of Jamaicans do not trust the state’s capacity to protect their personal data. These are the real issues that we must focus on and that we are focusing on.
We therefore must appreciate and recognize these challenges and find ways to overcome them while at the same time bringing the benefits of modern technology to all our people. We must do this because we cannot afford for our nation to be left behind as has happened in the past. We must recognize that digitization is the tool for delivering value to our people. We must therefore use these tools and we must develop the skills to use them wisely.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience and forbearance.