By 2019, Sri Lanka has had mobile phone services for 30 years (since June 1989) and commercial internet connectivity for nearly a quarter century (since April 1995). The latest statistics from the Telecom Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka show that 32,528,104 active SIMs were in use by December 2018 or 150 SIMs for every 100 persons in the country. (Source: http://bit.ly/TRCSLData) This includes SIM cards used in POS machines, parking meters and dongles.
According to the same official source, Sri Lanka had a total of 1,530,099 fixed internet subscriptions and another 5,733,062 mobile broadband subscriptions by end-2018. This produced a total of 7,263,161 internet subscriptions in the country. In other words, around a third of Sri Lanka’s population is now online.All this represents the supply side, but what do these figures really mean? Aggregated data can’t tell us whether users of information and communications technologies (ICTs) are male or female, urban or rural, or for what purposes they use ICT. Also, this kind of data says nothing about people who don’t yet use ICT or what is stopping them.
To get these details, demand-side research is needed. Doing it in a sufficiently large scale is both tedious and costly – which is why it does not happen often enough.
Colombo-anchored think tank LIRNEasia recently published the findings of such a study with some fascinating insights. Called ‘AfterAccess’, it is part of a global research effort to understand ICT use at individual, household and small/micro-enterprise levels in selected emerging economies in Asia, Africa and Latin America. (Details at: https://afteraccess.net)
BEYOND THE DIGITAL HYPE
Since the early 2000s, there has been much discussion on mobilising ICT for development (ICT4D) getting increasingly affordable digital tools and market forces to solve development problems in education, health, resource management and disaster resilience.But the early hype has given way to a more nuanced understanding. For example, the World Bank’s World Development Report 2016 critically examined digital dividends – the broader development benefits from using digital technologies. The report collated evidence for the rapid spread of such technologies in most parts of the world, but noted how their adoption alone is not enough to transform societies and economies.
To get the most out of the digital revolution, the World Bank said countries also needed to work on “analogue complements” – such as strengthening regulations that ensure competition among businesses, adapting workers’ skills to the demands of the new economy and ensuring that institutions are accountable. LIRNEasia’s AfterAccess research in seven Asian countries – Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka — provides much-needed reality checks along the same lines. Their analysis shows uneven digital progress and new kinds of disparities that warrant policymakers’ attention.
AfterAccess’ Sri Lanka survey covered 2,017 persons in the age range of 15 to 65, in randomly chosen households from 100 gramaniladhari divisions across all nine provinces. Among the Lankans surveyed, 78% owned a mobile phone, i.e. an active mobile SIM and a device. Only 47% of mobile owners had a smartphone. Another 7% had feature phones, while the rest (46%) owned basic phones. When it came to the internet, 62% surveyed said they knew about it – but only 37% is actually using it. The data shows that internet adoption is highest among the young, educated and affluent – but income is not the main limiting factor that prevents non-users from getting connected.
Women aged 15-65 are 34% less likely to have used the internet than men, while a rural resident is 23% less likely to have used the internet than a city dweller. As researchers crunched the numbers, two key findings stood out. First, Sri Lanka does not perform as well as expected on key digital indicators when compared to countries with similar per capita income levels – and in some cases, even poorer ones (for example, there is greater smartphone ownership in Cambodia and Nepal).
Second, awareness of the internet and related services does not translate to enough actual use. Even among those who go online, there is limited participation in e-commerce and e-government services. The survey found that a majority of Lankan web users are not going beyond browsing to derive the various economic and efficiency dividends the web provides. Only 40% of internet users have done an interactive function such as a web search, posting or commenting on a website or social media, installing an app, or creating a login using a particular web service.
LIRNEasia’s CEO Helani Galpaya says she has been surprised to find how few Sri Lankans are using the internet.“Given all the buzz about social media, Facebook, hate speech and such, it seems like everyone is online. Yet the data says otherwise.” “We are rich in comparison to many of the other Asian countries surveyed, but we aren’t performing like a richer country. It’s ironic because we were one of the first countries in this region to roll out 3G and even 4G.”
E-Commerce
The gaps between hype and reality are clearly seen in areas like e-commerce and e-government. Although 70% of Lankan internet users were aware of e-commerce (the highest among Asian countries surveyed), only 43% actually use any service. And among e-commerce users, only 2% prefer internet banking or mobile money transactions. Among those who are aware of e-commerce platforms but don’t use them, 45% said they didn’t see a need as they preferred to purchase goods or services directly from physical stores. Another 22% said they didn’t know how to use e-commerce platforms.
After Access also found that some internet users enter e-commerce platforms only to search for goods or services. Some went on to place an order via the platform, but only a few (26% of users in Cambodia, 17% in Sri Lanka, 16% in India and 1% in Pakistan) completed a full transaction (search, order, payment and delivery) through the platform. When probed why, users said they have sufficient offline options or hesitated to share personal and financial details with third parties. Some also had concerns about the quality of goods and whether it would be delivered at all. This highlights a lack of public trust, even though the legal and regulatory framework for electronic transactions has been streamlined in recent years.
Payments for online purchases were most often made through debit cards (preferred in India and Sri Lanka) or cash-on-delivery (in all Asian countries covered). In Sri Lanka, 31% of all payments were made on COD basis, and another 30% via debit card. Some in India and Pakistan said they use mobile and/or internet banking for e-commerce
payments. Among those who know about e-commerce, only negligible numbers (less than 10%) said they have ever used a platform to sell a good or service. Most who don’t (84%) said they don’t have a need to do so, and another 8% said they don’t know how to.
Speaking at the Colombo launch of the survey findings on 22 May 2019, Helani Galpaya said: “The gap between awareness and use of e-commerce services needs to be addressed, especially if Sri Lanka is keen on growing the e-commerce market.” LIRNEasia estimates that there are around 1.6 million e-commerce users in Sri Lanka in 2019. Taxi-hailing services are the most popular e-commerce service, with an estimated market size of about 900,000 users, followed by goods and products (e.g. Amazon, AliExpress, eBay), and tickets and appointments (movies, railways and doctors’ appointments, etc).
[pullquote]THE UN DEFINES E-GOVERNMENT AS USING THE INTERNET TO DELIVER GOVERNMENT INFORMATION TO CITIZENS[/pullquote]
E-GOVERNMENT
The UN defines e-government as using the internet and the web for delivering government information and services to citizens. The UN’s latest (2018) E-government Development Index (EGDI) ranked Sri Lanka at No 94 out of 193 countries. Nearly one-third (30%) of Lankan internet users surveyed said they had accessed government websites. Most of such accessing was simply for obtaining information (on services, government news, or data). Only 2% of internet users said they had communicated with an officer via an online platform and/ or email on a specific matter, while 4% say they have transacted online with a government agency (e.g. to submit a form, apply for a benefit, or lodge a complaint).
Reasons for not using e-gov services were predictable: not knowing how to access them (42%), not knowing which government website to go to (28%), and understanding but not seeing a value (30%). Galpaya says this raises serious questions. Over the past two decades, ICT4D has received massive investments and focus from agencies like the World Bank (that supported the e-Sri Lanka programme from 2004 to 2010). Where are
the expected digital dividends?
She notes: “Very few internet users have done any transactions with the government or interacted with government officials. So e-Gov programmes really haven’t ‘transformed’ our relationship with the government. Isn’t that a problem, after all the re-engineering of government process Sri Lanka has gone through?” Survey findings can be interpreted in different ways, but with some caution. AfterAccess raises more questions than it answers – and we need to be rigorously discussing them.