Jamaica: Proposed ICT authority to be established next year

The proposed information and communications technology (ICT) authority is to be established next year as the government moves to position Jamaica as an ICT leader in the region.

Multinational professional service firm, Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) is providing consulting services in the setting up of the authority, creating an organisational structure headed by a chief security officer.

Chief Information Officer (CIO) in the Science and Technology Ministry, Dr Louis Shallal, informed that the authority will guide the public sector’s responsiveness to the needs of the citizens.

This, he said, will be done “by thoroughly applying purposeful applications and appropriate ICT solutions in service delivery, incorporating security by design”.

“It (the authority) will leverage all the knowledge, capacity and ingenuity of our people in all the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs). It will bring them together to collaborate. It will bring new technologies that will allow us to be state-of-the-art in how technology is deployed,” he said.

Shallal was speaking at a Cybersecurity Business Leaders’ Forum at The Knutsford Court Hotel on Chelsea Avenue in Kingston on October 26.

The National Cybersecurity Awareness Day event was held under the theme ‘Cybersecurity, Our Shared Responsibility, from the Boardroom to All Rooms’.

Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service, Fayval Williams, said that the forum’s theme is timely in light of the continued cybersecurity threats.

“We have to work together to create a risk-aware culture, where employees are educated about the cybersecurity hazards we face and trained to take the right actions to defend against them,” she said.

She noted measures being implemented by Government to protect critical data, citing the National Identification System (NIDS), Data Protection Act and the review of the Cybercrimes Act.

She noted further that the Data Protection Act seeks to sensitise and empower all Jamaicans.

“It covers the need for personal responsibility in the security of your critical and sensitive information, while offering tools to remediate incidents of compromise, so we have a people who are safe and feel confident in participating in the development of Jamaica,” she said.

Williams pointed out that Jamaica has taken steps to create a Cybersecurity Strategy, which has led to the country achieving the number-one rating in the Caribbean region by the 2017 International Telecommunications Union Global Cybersecurity Index.

She said the Government has committed its support to the Jamaica Cyber Incident Response Team (JaCIRT), which will need to be further empowered to become more proactive “in providing strategic and technical policies and guidelines on matters of cybersecurity”.

“They must become an effective cyber shield providing the country with the competencies necessary to protect ourselves, giving us effective early warning signals to combat threats to our sovereignty,” she added.