Indeed, Jamaica, historically one of the more economically-, politically- and socially-challenged countries in the region, has for some time now been working on an e-government programme that has drawn praise from around the world. In fact, Jamaica has offered to assist its CARICOM counterparts in their development of e-readiness and e-governance programmes, having been ranked as the leading English-speaking Caribbean country in e-readiness by a survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit of the Economist Magazine.
E-readiness is the extent to which a country is open to Internet-based opportunities. At least six of Jamaica’s government agencies currently facilitate online transactions and business activity.
In the US, a myriad of different entities in the public and private sectors offer comprehensive access to their services online.
One can access public registry and court records online and those entitled may, within a matter of minutes, order and pay for copies, for delivery either electronically or by mail, without even leaving their homes. In the Cayman Islands, by comparison, access to public documents is still very 19th century.
We have often remarked that, in comparison to other countries, official websites here may be very pretty and technologically advanced, but they have hardly any interactive features that allow the user to conduct business online that would otherwise require a phone call, a letter, or a visit in person. Appearance is no substitute for functionality.
The Cayman Islands enjoys an economic standard equivalent to, if not better than, many developed countries and it’s about time determined steps were taken to match them in terms of ease of accessing public services and records.
Furthermore, this modern mode of conducting business will be enhanced while saving tens of thousands of hours of non-essential time on the road, waiting in lines and spent on the telephones thereby creating a boon to the economy if the importation of computers is made duty-free as is now the case for many of our regional neighbours.
For a country that prides itself on the standard of services offered to visitors and customers in the financial and tourism sectors, as well as the public at large, we are seriously lagging behind current standards in the delivery of public information.
This should be a cause of great concern.
Given this country’s background of success in the banking and finance sector, along with technologically advanced communications systems, the Cayman Islands cannot afford to lag behind in any of the areas that constitute e-readiness: connectivity and technology infrastructure, business environment, consumer and business adoption, legal and policy environment, social and cultural environment and supporting e-services.
Indeed, the 20 May general election pointed up some areas that could usefully be brought into the information technology age.
One such might be a machine readable voter ID card to replace the current paper version. In fact, perhaps this could be incorporated into a national ID card, especially as some voters, especially new ones, are using the voter registration card for this purpose anyway.
It might surely be possible to use such a card as part of a computerised polling system. Although such systems have experienced some teething problems in other countries, with a small electorate such as ours such a system could well be practicable.
And not only would the voting system itself benefit from a fundamental modernisation, it seems that the candidates and party political activists also need to bring themselves up to date on the relevant rules and requirements.
Even though the Elections Office publishes a handbook for candidates clearly setting out their disclosure responsibilities and the relevant deadlines, it seems that even this is not explicit enough, which leads one to wonder what more could or should be done to educate candidates.
There is an argument, of course, that such rules tend to weed out the careless and/or ignorant by allowing such oversights to be challenged but that will always be a controversial and divisive process.
Likewise, if party workers are to be permitted in proximity to voting stations, one would have hoped that the political parties might also have embarked on an appropriate education programme as to what is permissible on election day and what is not.
Again, incidents like the one that occurred on Wednesday will unnecessarily raise the temperature of the proceedings to no one’s benefit and could so easily have been avoided.
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Quelle/Source: Cayman Net News, 02.06.2009
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