Effective Governance Key to Caribbean ICT Development

 Trinidad and Tobago has risen three spots to place 60^th overall out of 142 countries ranked in the 2012 Global Information Technology Report, published earlier this month by the World Economic Forum (WEF). Even with its slightly improved ranking, Trinidad and Tobago lagged behind Latin America and Caribbean countries such as Barbados (35th), Puerto Rico (36th), Chile (39th), Uruguay (44th), Panama (57th) and Costa Rica (58th).

A closer look at the report's Networked Readiness Index reveals the reasons for Trinidad and Tobago's middling performance on the global stage. Prepared annually by the World Economic Forum, the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) measures the degree to which economies across the world leverage ICT for enhanced competitiveness.

One telling statistic: Trinidad and Tobago ranked first in world in terms of mobile network coverage but 82nd in terms of affordability of mobile rates, and in terms of internet and telephony competition--a dismal 117th!

The report comes after one Trinidad and Tobago government minister recently boasted of steadily climbing broadband penetration, saying that "there has been an 89 per cent increase in subscriber growth within the period 2006 to 2011."

"Here in Trinidad and Tobago, we have recorded approximately 192,000 fixed Internet subscribers with over 190,000 being subscribers of fixed broadband Internet services, as at the end of 2011," the minister is reported to have said.

But the WEF report shows that simple metrics such as Internet access and mobile network coverage are not sufficient indicators Government's capacity to convert technology penetration into actual social and economic impact.

In fact, Trinidad and Tobago is among the worst in the world in categories such as Impact of ICT on Access to Basic Services (109th), ICT Use and Government Efficiency (100th), Laws Relating to ICT (113th), Capacity for Innovation (120th), Impact of ICT on New Services and Products (111th) and Internet and Telephony Competition (117th).

The problem here is not technology but leadership, the report suggests. And the issue is not local but regional. As the report points out, "Latin America and the Caribbean continues to suffer from an important lag in adopting ICT and technology more broadly. This is reflected in the rankings, as no country manages to reach the top 30.”

Again, more interesting than the general rankings are the specific reasons identified for regional underdevelopment.  The report identifies three reasons:

• an insufficient investment in developing the ICT infrastructure;
• a weak skill base in the population, the result of poor educational systems that hinder society’s capacity to make an effective use of these technologies;
• and unfavorable business conditions that do not support the spur of entrepreneurship and innovation.

To you, those three reasons may seem less related to ICT and more related to enlightened governance and proactive leadership. And that's because they are.

“Addressing these weaknesses will be crucial for improving the region’s competitiveness and shifting its economies toward more knowledge-based activities," the report states.

The most networked countries typically have governments that place ICT at the core of development. Sweden, Singapore, Finland, Denmark and Switzerland rank at one to five, respectively. The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom ranked at eight to 10, respectively. Barbados and Puerto Rico, who topped the regional rankings, “boast environments conducive for entrepreneurship and benefit from relatively robust ICT infrastructures”.

“In both cases, ICT development has been led mainly by the private sector, especially in the case of Puerto Rico, as the governments in both islands have lagged behind in steering ICT progress. Moving forward, Barbados would obtain higher economic impacts from its overall good ICT uptake should the private sector further improve its overall innovation capacity,” the report stated.

The good news is that Barbados and Puerto Rico are exemplary; the bad news is that they  represent an exception to the general performance of the countries of this region.

The report used the term “global digital divide” to describe the gap between the advanced economies and the rest of the world in terms of access and use of information and communication technologies (ICT), and thus its economic and social impacts. That gap remains “widest with sub-Saharan Africa, and smaller with Developing Asia and with Latin America and the Caribbean”, the report says.

While Latin America and the Caribbean are “very close in most dimensions” to Developing Asia, one significant difference is that the governments of Developing Asia take more of a leadership role than this region’s governments to develop and leverage ICT in society.

In fact, Developing Asia has “almost closed the gap with advanced economies” with regard to effective governance, the report stated.

The NRI is highly respected and extensively used by policymakers and elevant stakeholders as a unique tool to identify strengths on which to build and weaknesses that need to be addressed in national strategies for enhanced networked readiness.

But don't be surprised if local mainstream media only focus on the fact that Trinidad and Tobago outperformed several larger territories in this region such as Brazil (65th), Colombia (73rd), Jamaica (74th) and neighbouring Venezuela (107th).

Or if--as is perhaps most likely--the report doesn't make the 24-hour news cycle at all.

Source: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_IT_Report_2012.pdf