Computerization in Cuba: driving force for prosperity

Likewise, tourism is known in Cuba as the smokeless driving force because of its important role in pulling the wagons of the national economy, the emerging computerization that makes its way in the insular reality is a driving force too, unavoidable for both Cuba and the entire world today.

From that conviction, increasingly collective, the nation projects itself. It is not for pleasure that the President of the Councils of State and Ministers, Miguel Díaz-Canel himself, commented in the latest session of the National Assembly of People’s Power (Cuban Parliament) that “this is a reality that progresses and provides prosperity.”

It won’t be an issue of just snapping the fingers so Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) insert themselves into every beating of the daily life. Our status of underdeveloped and blocked country makes it harder for us.

But anyway, it is based and will continue to be based on an express political will, which knows that computerization is synonymous with effectiveness, efficiency, competiveness and, firstly, rise in the quality of life of citizens.

On the basis of achieving those aims, Cuba’s Communications Minister Jorge Luis Perdomo has explained that this complex, costly but indispensable process is based on four pillars: to have an infrastructure for telecommunications; with digital services and contents for the country; cybersecurity and to have a regulatory framework that allows to deploy the aforementioned.

Even when the Ministry of Communications is in charge of the management and control of that process, all gears of the socioeconomic reality of the country are necessarily involved. At the same time that, as Perdomo himself recalled “all bodies of the Central Administration of the State have the obligation to implement it and make it functional and sustainable.”

For this year and not for the coming one

Everything said so far here explains why the Cuban president, when summarizing the most relevant events in 2018, underlined that “it has been a year for boosting e-government”, which he described as a priority in the computerization of the country.

Besides enabling and simplifying procedures and managements –leaving bureaucracy without oxygen–, the most important aspect of this kind of government is the possibility that it provides for the exchange and greater closeness between leaders and the people.

All Cuban ministries have already created their space on the web, as well as other entities, even the president himself keeps an active participation on Twitter; it would be necessary to climb a new step now: to encourage that interaction with the citizens and to know how to take advantage of it.

Also for this 2019, emphasis has been made on e-commerce, still in its infancy, but equally necessary for the quickness in financial transactions, and, among other points in its favor, to guarantee the transparency of this job. “Using payment gateways contributes to progress”, claimed the minister of communications.

Part of the road has been walked: the qualification of the human capital owned by the country, as well as its training in the field of information and communications technologies.

This year, thus has been specified, the job of the leaders at all levels should increasingly embrace social communication, science, research and innovation, as well as computerization in its entirety, as key tools for their management.

Computerization in Cuba is already progressing, as the president has ratified. No single day should be missed to continue boosting it, because it would be a day lost with a view to the prosperity of the nation.

Translated by Jorge Mesa Benjamin / CubaSi Translation Staff