A new government-backed mobile application designed to help citizens report community issues and access public services more efficiently is expected to strengthen accountability and speed up responses across state agencies, Prime Minister Mia Mottley has declared.
She said: “We have developed in this country through these brilliant young Barbadians and with the guidance of [app developer Ramon] Dummett, a tool that makes the Office of Citizen Engagement and Media Relations more responsive and more capable of meeting the needs and expectations of citizens where they are and not where we want them to be.”
While governments are often judged on major economic and structural reforms, the daily experiences of citizens are frequently shaped by smaller, unresolved community issues, she said. She noted that the platform’s strength lies in its ability to address local challenges that contribute to public frustration.
“Yes, we have been elected to do the big things, but also the small things that irritate people,” Mottley said. “The things that cause people to put long strips. In the middle of their sentence because they don’t understand how this pipe has been leaking for 3 days and every time I call the water authority, then got me holding on, holding on, holding on.”
The application streamlines reporting into three steps: writing a brief description of the issue, capturing the live GPS location, and uploading supporting photographs or videos. Using automated routing technology, the system analyses each report and sends it directly to the relevant department without manual handling.
Pearly app icon
The platform is built on two main features: “Ask Pearly”, which provides links to opening hours and document requirements across 155 government entities, and “Tell Pearly”, which handles direct incident reporting.
Mottley said she hopes the application will ease frustrations associated with public services, adding that the name “Tell Pearly” would “hopefully replace the other four-letter words that people were using when they got frustrated with the delivery of government services.”
Built by the Touchstar Group, a Barbadian technology start-up led by Dummett, the platform includes real-time integration with the Transport Board. Users can track bus locations on live maps and access predictive traffic updates on their lock screens, helping reduce commuter uncertainty.
The launch forms part of a wider national digital transformation programme. The initiative is the first of three major technology rollouts planned to modernise commerce and public administration, with the second – BimPay – to be launched overnight Saturday.
“The next one will be at midnight on Friday night when at long last. The Central Bank of Barbados will launch BiMPay,” Mottley said, referring to the island’s real-time digital payment system. A third application, due next week, will allow citizens to pay bills and transfer funds via WhatsApp, reducing the need to queue at licensing authorities.
The platform’s name draws on Barbadian heritage, reimagining the traditional figure of “Pearly” — based on the officious character from the Bajan Bus Stop television series – as a modern tool for civic oversight.
Mottley also praised the decision to reject generic overseas software in favour of homegrown development, noting that the intellectual property created could be exported to other small island developing states.
“We turned down an app from overseas that was a generic app. In order to give you the chance. Not only to prove what you could do, but to give you the confidence of being able to see something, solve something,” the PM remarked to the development team.
“If you can use Barbados as the prototype to do these problems, rest assured that there are 46 other small island states across the world that probably are experiencing similar problems.”
Minister of Innovation, Industry, Science and Technology, Senator Jonathan Reid, praised the team for taking risks to develop a solution tailored to Barbados, declaring that modern leadership requires a willingness to experiment and learn quickly.
“Leadership in 2026 is really you being willing to be the first learner,” Senator Reid said. “And if you’re the first learner, you’re gonna be the first person to fail, and you’re gonna be the first person to take the risks, and how do you learn quickly from that failure, adapt, and build from there a series of success.”
The application emerged from a practical need when Director of Citizenship and Engagement Roy Morris sought a way to manage a high volume of daily public complaints, he said.
Although the initial prototype needed refinement, the team overcame technical challenges to deliver a system capable of improving response times across government, said the innovation minister.
The platform demonstrates the potential of Barbadian technology on the global stage and encourages entrepreneurs to treat national challenges as opportunities for growth, he added.
“The idea is that if you see a problem that is a scale problem, you should be able to interact with the government in a dynamic and respectful way to build new value that ultimately serves us well, but to serve the world,” Senator Reid said.
“Ultimately, we want to be a platform on which people could solve national problems but also create opportunities to create global businesses. This could be taken—once done well—this could be taken abroad anyway, right? And it would have been a Barbadian IP with Barbadian ideas, Barbadian skills, using Barbadian data to save the world.”
(RR)
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