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The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA), said the signing of an Agreement to operationalise e-governance in Guyana, without the framework legislation covering Data Protection being in place, is reckless in the extreme.
The body, in a recent statement has called for the project to be paused citing concern for “the haste, absence of public consultation and threats to the integrity of personal information, not to mention the seeming illegality of sole-sourcing the project,” requesting that it be submitted to Parliament for deliberation.
Guyana is unique in the Caribbean at present in having no electronic transactions Act to displace time-consuming and stressful paper-based procedures, for example, in registering births and deaths, creating a bank account or registering a company, stated the GHRA
“For a number of years CARICOM countries have been holding serious consultations on Data and Privacy Protection legislation covering vital matters such as terms of consent, data sharing by Government agencies and the ‘right to be forgotten’, among others. (This right covers situations in which people may and may not request their information not to be publicized.) All of this is side-lined by a Government dazzled by the prospect of ‘e-health, e-education, e-security, e-agriculture, electronic permits, and license processing, etcetera’.”
GHRA, referenced the Tech Transactions & Data Privacy 2022 Report, published in the recent edition of The National Law Review “businesses are increasingly pivoting to digital service models that leverage the internet in place of in-person transactions” to support its position. Pointing out that “moving data across borders for processing off-shore is the essence of multi-national business,” the human rights grouping said this does not sit easily with Guyana’s love affair with pieces of paper accompanying every conceivable business transaction. “For all of these reasons Guyana needs to transition to an e-world, but to do so with circumspection.”
GHRA warned the key democratic and ethical issues associated with adoption of such legislation is the misuse of data transferred internationally by countries and multinational companies. “The European Union, for example, recognises only thirteen countries to which data may be transferred safely, the United States not being one of them.”
Apart, therefore, from the practical challenges involved in digitalisation, there are also human rights concerns in relation to protection of personal and nationally sensitive data, the body advised.
“Contrary to the caution required in this area Guyana’s transition from a state of electronic illiteracy to a digital world is being placed (and if sole-sourced, illegally) in the hands of foreign private companies, apparently orchestrated by the United Arab Emirates, tarnished by its illegal gold transactions.”
Further the body stated is being questioned why, in light of our digital backwardness to date, better informed expertise was not sought from experienced impartial sources, instead of the technical suitability of the company and programme determined by the National Data Management technicians.
“An equally critical issue is the systematic global under-estimating of costs of major Information and Communications Technology ICT) infra-structure projects and the likelihood of sky-rocketing prices down the road.
“Despite being the most common infra-structure projects, roads and bridges suffer globally from cost-benefit miscalculations in the region of an average of 40% on the former and 38.8% on the latter. This remains true both globally and over-time. However, they pale in comparison with cost-overruns on ‘one-off’ projects such as the Channel Tunnel, the Sydney Opera House and London Olympics which turned into financial nightmares. This is particularly pertinent in light of the fact that Guyana’s major infra-structure projects – the Amaila Hydro, the deep-sea gas pipeline and the gas plant – are all one-off with few references for comparison.”
‘Delusional optimism’ rather than a rational weighting of gains, losses, and probabilities has been suggested as a major cause of underestimation of cost and over-estimation of benefits, GHRA cautioned.
“Over-estimates on ICT projects were so high, according to a leading authority on cost-benefit in infra-structure projects that “if a major project is not already messed up, injecting a good dose of ICT will do the job” he was told.
“Under-estimating costs and over-estimating benefits on the proposed project is also vulnerable to consultants taking advantage of Guyana’s incalculable oil wealth, our dilapidated system of public accounts and the haste to get the job done. In light of this, all Guyana Government personnel with responsibilities for Guyana’s large infra-structure and ICT projects would be advised to read the source document for reference, namely Bent Flyvberg, ‘Survival of the Unfittest: Why the Worst Infrastructure Gets Built – And What We Can Do About It’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, December 2009.”
To this end the GHRA advised “the most prudent course of action would be for Guyana to engage with CARICOM in an effort to ensure that this new project harmonises with and benefits from the Parliamentary experience of CARICOM States such as Barbados, Trinidad and Jamaica. Indeed, as a gesture of regionalising Guyana’s new-found wealth Guyana’s Parliament should offer to fund a digitisation process in CARICOM.”
