Modern Digital Society Must Be Built on Trust – Minister

Jamaica’s modern digital society must be built on a solid foundation of trust, privacy and protection of citizens’ data rights.

This has been emphasised by Minister without Portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for Efficiency, Innovation, and Digital Transformation, Senator the Hon. Ambassador Audrey Marks.

Addressing Tuesday’s (July 1) Privacy and Legal Management Consultants (PLMC) Prioritising Privacy: Protect, Comply, Thrive conference, held at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Regional Headquarters in St. Andrew, she underscored that digital innovation will only succeed when people trust the systems behind it.

“That is why Jamaica’s digital strategy revolves around three key pillars to strengthen trust. Efficiency, which is modernising service delivery; Innovation – leveraging emerging technologies; and Data Governance – ensuring ethical, lawful handling of data,” Ambassador Marks said.

Meanwhile, she shared that as at the end of 2024, 1,000 organisations were registered with the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC).

Noting that it is a promising sign, she reasoned that registration is only the start and urged businesses to change how they think, act and innovate when it comes to digital transformation and securing privacy.

“Jamaica is moving beyond mere compliance into a culture where privacy is a shared value, just as vital as innovation itself, and organisations and businesses must catch up,” she said.

Ambassador Marks explained that data privacy without cybersecurity is a false sense of protection, as breaches, ransomware attacks and other schemes are daily realities.

“JaCIRT (Jamaica Cyber Incident Response Team) works to ensure we not only build secure systems but also respond rapidly when something goes wrong. Together, the OIC and JaCIRT form Jamaica’s two-pronged defence. One enforces lawful data handling, and the other protects against malicious digital threats,” she said.

Ambassador Marks added that as Jamaica moves into a more connected future, privacy cannot be an afterthought. Rather, “it must be the DNA of everything that we build”.