Nations are known to develop a National Archival and Database Management system; the national database system can be defined as a storage system for record keeping. According to Wikipedia, a government’s database collects information for various reasons, including climate monitoring, securities, law, and compliance, geographical surveys, patent applications and grants, surveillance, national security, border control, law enforcement, public health, voter registration, and vehicle registration, social security, and statistics. While these may sound basic for every system of government that dots the globe, it is simply not the case.
In the advanced economies, not only have they met, and surpassed expectations in their National Data Management system, their business ecosystem thrives off the database. In the United States, every professional association has a database, for instance to buy and resell used cars, the requirement is to obtain a bidding license, which entails that the applicant’s identification records will be stored in the auto bidder’s database, that is centrally controlled and nationally accessible. In some developing countries real estate industry, is not regulated, any random person will work as an agent. Real estate is an asset that is priced in millions of any currency, which requires serious vetting of its players!
Why certain developing countries don’t have an existing National Database? Let’s not mistake the issuance of a country’s International Passport to the existence of a database. After all an International Passport is a paper document that stores the name and certain details of the giver at a certain point in time. While a National Database contains comprehensive data of all its nationals, and it can be queried to supply answers when needed. Why does armed robbery, kidnap, rape cases happen in these climes over and over? Often involving same offenders, who might have been once convicted by a competent court at some point, served their sentences and released, yet there are no national record documenting these events.
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It simply means that these serial rapists will still find their way back to easily renting, and possibly living amongst families with teenage female kids, because there is nothing like the sex offender record existing or an ex-convict easily mixes with the populace or easily apply for jobs, without a trace of his past criminal records.
How can business contracts be easily enforced in such climes? Where there is no reliable database? In the United States a car rental customer, literally walks into a car rental shop, books, and picks a car from say St Louis, and drops it off a week later at Texas location of the car rental company, without the thought of stealing or vandalizing the vehicle. Texas is about 830 miles from St Louis, yet the car rental company, trusted the driving license, the walk-in customer tendered, because it can be confirmed easily, and the social security gives additional comfort. This is why the gig jobs thrive in these climes.
Most developing nations can boast of having a young population, as against the developed world, where ageism is more prevalent and may adversely affect the working population. According to a United Nations report, countries like Angola, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Uganda have a median age for their population below 18 years. Yet these countries are not able to leverage the full benefits of the trending gig economy, which feeds off a sound banking network and a reliable national database framework.
The national data management system made it easy, for the advanced countries to manage the national disruption that was caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, in managing limited hospital facilities, the distribution of stimulus checks and palliatives. Additionally, the government had a reliable data of its populace that was infected by the pandemic and with this a more focused national planning strategy was possible.
I conclude by mentioning that developing countries stand to gain significantly from having a robust and an efficient data management system in place.