The Urgency to Strengthen our Digital Resilience

This article was also published in Cinco Días

COVID-19 has tested the digital capacity of societies, economies and governments, and has become a kind of global audit of our digital resilience. Our lives will change dramatically once the crisis is over, and while we still don't know how, we need to accelerate digital transformation in all areas of our lives, both individually and as countries.

The need for digital public services, online civil procedures, efficient connectivity infrastructures and telecommuting-ready personnel with the skills needed for digital world can no longer be circumvented. In recent weeks we have seen national and local governments turn to the development of apps, bots and other technological responses invaluable in mitigating the effects of COVID-19.

In the short term, digital solutions should help ensure the transparency in the purchasing processes of the emergency programs being designed. Let us not forget that corruption and inefficiency in public spending can mean an increase in lethality during the pandemic. There are examples of digital innovations which, combined with open data, not only help maintain integrity in the crisis care process, but also make it more efficient.

Colombia’s government procurement agency Colombia Compra Eficiente (CCE), for example, is implementing a variety of innovations to offer extraordinary procurementregulations. Its Electronic Procurement System allows offering parties to register for contracts, as well as subscribe to pricing agreements for the emergency. The CCE will conduct public tenders and contracts will be awarded digitally. For the duration of the pandemic, public entities may purchase goods through the system’s online store with non-compliance sanctions imposed electronically.

Paraguay’s communication ministry, through the emergency declaration law, has also made available to state entities, in open data format, a portal to access relevant information about emergency expenses. This facilitates collaborative work between control bodies, spending implementers and civil society.

In Europe, Ukraine’s digital public procurement system Dozorro monitors medical procurement and emergency expenses, making it possible to track price differences for COVID-19 testing and verify the price of supplies for hospitals. Faced with an overflowing demand for intensive care respirators, the British government opened a call to other industries, -such as automotive- to develop technological innovations aimed at addressing the emergency. This process was facilitated by the online public procurement system.

These examples show that the current crisis is accelerating the digital transformation of public services. In times of coronavirus, the public administration is being forced to interact with citizens completely over the internet, moving innovation forward. Panama, for example, developed the ROSA (Automatic Health Operational Response), a virtual assistant contacted via WhatsApp that assists people using artificial intelligence algorithms to determine patient characteristics. The application then assesses the patient’s individual situation for escalation to a virtual office where he or she can be evaluated by doctors, who may send an ambulance for physical observation and home care, or refer them to a hospital. Colombia developed CoronApp<>, a symptom reporting application that provides centralized information on government measures, prevention recommendations, health service locations, and healthcare channels.

Digital start-ups also joined the efforts through novel solutions. No government, not even municipal ones, can deal with the current health emergency or its consequences in the medium and long term on its own. In order to manage real-time information, the application City Listener, by OS City allows Latin Americans to find out the needs of citizens, georeference quarantine violations and know the supply status of various materials across health centers.

To improve contagion traceability, application Govtech Singapore’s Trace Together uses encryption technology and Bluetooth from cell phones to detect when a citizen gets together with another. The information is stored for 21 days the speculated possible duration of the virus. To track the infected patients, Taiwan created a 'digital barrier' using large amounts of data and mobile technology to monitor the location of the infection victim and send alert messages when they are outside a particular radius, potentially putting others at risk.

The crisis is hitting cities in particular and we all wonder what life will be like after confinement. There is no doubt that data will become increasingly important. In Latin America, the most urbanized developing region on the planet, the challenge is monumental, especially given the low quality of urban infrastructure, high population density and work informality.

This crisis should serve to rethink state reform, as well as restore its capabilities, strengthen its agility and accelerate its digital transformation using new technologies and data intelligence.