KINGSTON, Jamaica (JIS) —  National Security Minister, Dr Horace Chang, says Government’s implementation of the National Identification System (NIDS) will ensure that Jamaica becomes a technologically secure country comparable to more developed nations.

“This system will propel Jamaica’s drive (towards) digitisation, comparable to countries such as Spain, Colombia, Peru and Estonia,” he said.

Chang added that NIDS will assist in mitigating the challenges associated with electronic fraud, enabling a reduction in identity theft and protection against human trafficking.

“The data that will be amalgamated through NIDS will be taken apart and used to make Jamaica safer. We have taken great pains to ensure that vibrant security architecture is established around our big data ecosystem,” he noted.  

Chang was speaking at the sixth staging of the National Cybersecurity Conference at the Regional Headquarters of the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) on Tuesday.

The two-day conference is being held under the theme ‘Data Protection – Securing Big Data, Understanding Biometric and Protecting National ID Systems’.

The NIDS project, which is being funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Government, seeks to establish a national database for all Jamaicans. It is a secure and reliable way to verify a person’s identity. NIDS will provide each citizen with a unique national identification number, which the user will keep for life.

Chang assured that the data collected through NIDS will be securely stored and monitored to safeguard against breaches.

He noted that the Government is ensuring that strong supporting legislation is in place to combat cybercrime, protect sensitive data and bolster NIDS.

He pointed to the Data Protection Bill, which is before a Joint Select Committee of Parliament.

The minsiter said that the provisions in the Bill bear similarities to the European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was enacted earlier this year.   

It is intended to safeguard, in general, the privacy of individuals in relation to personal data as well as govern the collection, regulation, processing, keeping, use and disclosure of certain information in physical or electronic form.

The legislation will seek to set out the rights of the individual, with respect to their personal data. This will include, for example, the right to confirm whether personal information or data are being processed by an organisation.