Addressing Concerns About Digitization
The governments of several developing countries, like India's, have ambitions of making their populations go completely "digital". But, this idea has several roadblocks to combat. These hindrances range from lack of basic infrastructure, to breach of cyber-safety.
To completely digitize the economy, it is important to make legal changes in the law books that were made decades ago, when technology was not expected to enter the spheres of life it has. App-based businesses are often found to be at loggerheads with the governments, simply because the legal policies haven't been amended according to the changing business environments.
Not all sections of the population are exposed enough to technological advancements as those in urban regions of a country. In several developing countries, illiteracy is a major blockade. Most service providers also find it difficult to provide connectivity in several remote areas, owing to the geographical and topographical conditions. When digitization is forced in such countries, a "digital divide" is inevitably created.
Apart from this, it is also seen that in many developing countries, net neutrality is still being fought for. Network and data security still fail to impress a large section of the population. When data centers are located in foreign countries and managed by foreign authorities, an individual obviously tends to doubt the safety of the credentials that are uploaded to a database. A rise in cases of leaks of confidential data, in several parts of the world, has only deteriorated the faith in digitization.
Recent stories of cyber crimes, that majorly include digital theft of money from bank accounts, have angered citizens. There is a lot more faith associated with indigenous manufacturing than imported goods. This applies to software as well.
Digitization seems to be the golden solution to many inefficient services. But, it brings with itself a huge set of hiccups that the governments have to work to get rid of.
