Though it does not cur­rent­ly ap­pear to be the case, it should oc­cur to all April 28 com­peti­tors that among the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion, there now re­sides a large co­hort of adult folks who con­sid­er elec­tion promis­es to be dis­pens­able fluff un­less a clear path to achiev­abil­i­ty is of­fered.

This is de­fi­ant of even stub­born tra­di­tion­al loy­al­ties and pun­ish­able by re­jec­tion of the en­tire sys­tem of elec­toral se­lec­tion. Sur­vey first and sec­ond-time el­i­gi­ble vot­ers and see what I mean.

They, more than oth­ers, see that the penal­ty for not pay­ing close at­ten­tion to the “hows” of the nu­mer­ous “whats” is the pain we re­peat­ed­ly en­dure each time cam­paign dust set­tles and we be­gin go­ing about our busi­ness in the ex­pec­ta­tion that some crit­i­cal fea­tures of our lives will change ... for the bet­ter.

Among the com­mon threads is the no­tion that the achieve­ment of moder­ni­ty in the con­duct of pub­lic busi­ness has the po­ten­tial to as­sure bet­ter out­comes. For the dig­i­tal gen­er­a­tion, this is an in­dis­pens­able pre­req­ui­site for deep­er per­son­al en­gage­ment.

For this group, an ef­fi­cient, tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven gov­ern­ment is not a lux­u­ry—it is a ne­ces­si­ty. They view dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion as a pre­req­ui­site for deep­er civic en­gage­ment and trust in lead­er­ship.

Let’s face it, there ex­ists no fun­da­men­tal ide­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences among the sev­er­al con­tes­tants. There is no one on the na­tion­al stage, for ex­am­ple, sug­gest­ing that the state should with­draw sub­stan­tial­ly from ser­vice de­liv­ery in key ar­eas in­clud­ing pub­lic health, ed­u­ca­tion, so­cial in­fra­struc­ture, and Dr Er­ic Williams’ 1973 di­rect and in­di­rect con­trol of the “com­mand­ing heights of the econ­o­my.”

To­day, there is the chal­lenge of en­gag­ing, even with­in the con­text of these long­stand­ing philo­soph­i­cal com­mit­ments, the task of drag­ging the coun­try, seem­ing­ly kick­ing and scream­ing, in­to the re­al­i­ties of vast­ly changed times.

This space has been used too many times to re­mind us that the dig­i­tal econ­o­my is no longer a mat­ter of choice and that hes­i­ta­tion on this mat­ter is cost­ing us dear­ly, in­clu­sive of the psy­cho­log­i­cal de­tach­ment of the young.

These peo­ple know that the res­o­lu­tion of chal­lenges goes be­yond the mere ac­qui­si­tion of the avail­able tech­no­log­i­cal tools and re­sides in the mind­set that dri­ves re­cep­tiv­i­ty or re­jec­tion. There are nu­mer­ous ex­am­ples of where we lag sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­hind.

Every sin­gle po­lit­i­cal par­ty, for ex­am­ple, has lament­ed dif­fi­cul­ties re­gard­ing the “ease of do­ing busi­ness.”

The tech ex­perts are mean­while unan­i­mous­ly de­clar­ing that among the ma­jor ob­sta­cles, is the fact that both pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor lethar­gy has con­tributed sub­stan­tial­ly to the cur­rent state of af­fairs and that the chal­lenge ex­ceeds the re­quire­ments of reg­u­la­tion and leg­is­la­tion.

On­line gov­ern­ment ser­vices are un­re­li­able and the slow pri­vate sec­tor em­brace of ap­pro­pri­ate tech­nolo­gies—through em­ploy­ment of dig­i­tal façades to mask man­u­al back­ends—has meant that things are al­most pur­pose­ly meant to pro­ceed slow­ly and in­ef­fi­cient­ly.

No! An “on­line” trans­ac­tion does not end in the abil­i­ty to down­load a PDF for com­ple­tion be­fore email­ing back to the agency! My on­line pay­ment should not take days “to process.” You’re do­ing it all wrong be­cause you do not tru­ly trust it. It’s not pa­per and sig­na­tures and flesh and blood at a counter.

Un­til I see bat­tal­ions of un­der-30s in the front­line of the re­quired progress, I will re­main scep­ti­cal about any re­al com­mit­ment to change. So don’t come to me with this “ease of do­ing busi­ness” belly­ache, with­out telling me how you pro­pose to make the promised changes through read­i­ly avail­able tech­no­log­i­cal so­lu­tions that ren­der trans­ac­tions more cost-ef­fec­tive, seam­less, and with the im­pact of low­er­ing (not in­creas­ing) the cost of do­ing busi­ness.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a brief word on the so-called “cash­less econ­o­my” —an ad­mirable ob­jec­tive that does not de­serve ca­su­al, ill-ad­vised re­jec­tion. All change in­volves re­al and/or per­ceived risks.

Cash­less trans­ac­tions, de­pend­ing on how things are arranged, can, in fact, come up against pri­va­cy and oth­er is­sues if we do not learn from oth­ers. But the wider, un­de­ni­able ben­e­fits of se­cu­ri­ty and con­ve­nience de­mand that se­ri­ous at­ten­tion be paid to prop­er ex­e­cu­tion—if we ever reach that point.

A vi­su­al­ly im­paired beg­gar in In­dia was re­cent­ly pho­tographed seek­ing con­tri­bu­tions via a QR code on his t-shirt ac­ti­vat­ing a phone cash trans­fer! The lat­ter prac­tice is wide­ly em­ployed through­out Asia and parts of Africa.

Speak­ing (em­bar­rass­ing­ly) of which, we are among the last few Caribbean states to move to im­ple­ment on­line Ar­rival Cards for in­com­ing pas­sen­gers. The sto­ry be­hind this goes be­yond the avail­abil­i­ty of the tech­nol­o­gy and re­sides deep with­in neg­a­tive mind­sets.

There are loads of oth­er things for vot­ers to think about. These in­clude words and be­hav­iours that have served to jeop­ar­dise elec­tabil­i­ty. Get past that and this coun­try’s em­bar­rass­ing dig­i­tal lag needs to be among the top tier is­sues for de­ci­sive con­sid­er­a­tion.