{"id":166084,"date":"2022-09-16T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-16T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ict-pulse.com\/?p=166084"},"modified":"2022-09-16T06:39:25","modified_gmt":"2022-09-16T11:39:25","slug":"data-in-the-caribbean-we-actually-have-a-lot-more-of-it-than-we-think-but-we-are-not-using-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/2022\/09\/data-in-the-caribbean-we-actually-have-a-lot-more-of-it-than-we-think-but-we-are-not-using-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Data in the Caribbean: we actually have a lot more of it than we think, but we are not using it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Although data might be the new oil, Caribbean countries and their governments seem to be behind the curve in terms of processing and analysing it to drive innovation, strategy and competitiveness. We discuss a few of the reasons why Caribbean governments, in particular, should be doing more with the data they already have.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We have all heard the phrase, \u201cData is the new oil\u201d. Attributed to Clive Humby, a British mathematician in 2006, it speaks to the power of data, not only in terms of its value but also in terms of the impact it has had, and continues to have, on every industry: to drive business, inform strategy, guide innovation and new discoveries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Caribbean region, a common complaint among policymakers and industry is the lack of data that is available. Recently, the Prime Minister of Barbados, Honourable Mia Mottley made an impassioned plea to private sector companies in Barbados to provide the critical information the Government needs to accurately capture economic activity:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe need to measure what we are doing and how much we are earning in this economy. Our failure to measure all the activity both within the formal sector and even in terms of the informal sector means that we are limiting ourselves in terms of our possibilities. The more we can measure what we are doing, the more space I have to help Barbadians as Minister of Finance,\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n

\u201c\u2026 Because at the end of the day, if we do not capture the size of this economy appropriately, it restricts the amount of fiscal space, the amount of room that Government will have to spend going forward. We really believe that there is more economic activity out there than the Government is capturing and we all know people who do their thing, but don\u2019t pay taxes or do their thing but don\u2019t come into the system\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\nSource:  Barbados Today<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Similar to Prime Minister Mottley, and across industry, regardless of the field, we all want access to authoritative data upon which to make properly informed decisions. For the data that is generated within our organisations, it is within our control to process and analyse it. However, in many instances, and to provide a more comprehensive context, access to a broad range of other data points, or the resulting analysis, is essential. In that regard, Government is the primary resource for that contextual information, which it also needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, although many Caribbean governments may be eager to collect even more data, we are concerned that they do not fully appreciate how truly valuable the data is, and the extent to which it can be leveraged. We outline a few reasons why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Governments already have a lot of data<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the details that Caribbean governments, in particular, tend to overlook, is the amount of data that they are already collecting. Almost every government ministry, department and agency collects data, but outside of the log book in which they are entered and filed, and accessed on the odd occasion to augment a report, the data is never really used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, Caribbean governments still operate in silos, which means that citizens and businesses have to share the same information over and over again when different ministries, departments or agencies are involved in the same transaction, and why we still need to walk from office to office with multiple copies of a document, which every office not only needs to sign but also needs to keep a copy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hence, and for all of the work that has been done so far to digitise governments, that is just the tip of the iceberg. Digitising all existing data, and making it manipulatable and accessible across government and to all publics (as appropriate), has not yet been comprehensively addressed by most Caribbean countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Governments are putting the onus on survey respondents<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the article shared from Barbados, the lament was that the private sector was not completing the surveys that the Statistical Services Department had disseminated. However, it could be argued that some of the desired information could be secured from other government ministries, departments and agencies, such as in relation to revenue, employment, taxes, production, imports and exports. Unfortunately, and with the way Caribbean governments tend to operate, the needed systems have not been put in place, and so the onus is put back on citizens and businesses to do the legwork that the governments are not prepared to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our data collection pools may be too small, so trust is an issue<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It is important to highlight that one of the considerations in the data collection process conducted by national statistical departments is the extent to which data can be anonymised. Depending on the country, the national statistical department will not collect certain data points, because the collection pool is too small and it may prove too challenging to safeguard the privacy of respondents, in order to foster trust between the statistical body and respondents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our relatively small countries, with our even smaller sectors and industries, where it is likely all the players know each other, anonymisation of the data may be near impossible. Further, and in the increasingly competitive markets in which most of our businesses are operating, safeguarding commercially sensitive information cannot be taken lightly. Hence data collection organisations ought to be cognisant of the concerns and imperatives of prospective respondents and do what needs to be done to secure their trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Being able to unlock the data we currently have is critical<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Finally, it must be emphasised that similar to oil, data needs to be processed and analysed for it to have true value. Critical to processing data is analytics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Caribbean region, fields such as data analytics and business intelligence are just beginning to gain traction in the private sector, but they still have not yet made any inroads into the public sector. It is thus the reason why although governments across the region collect large volumes of data and information, the analysis, conclusions and strategies that are developed tend to seem weak and not properly substantiated. In essence, although we may still need more data, all too often, we have not been properly leveraging the data we already have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image credit: Carlos Muza (Unsplash<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although data might be the new oil, Caribbean countries and their governments seem to be behind the curve in terms of processing and analysing it to drive innovation, strategy and competitiveness. We discuss a few of the reasons why Caribbean governments, in particular, ought to be doing more with the data they already have. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[186,71,274,482,38,352,32],"class_list":["post-166084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ict-tech","tag-big-data","tag-businesses","tag-data-analytics","tag-data-processing","tag-data-protection","tag-information-management","tag-information-society","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Data-information-laptop-statistics-numbers-computing-big-data-dashboard-trends-Carlos-Muza-Unsplash.jpg?fit=1024%2C632&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2iE1G-HcM","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166084"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166104,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166084\/revisions\/166104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}