MINISTER without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister Floyd Green has warned that Jamaica’s current system of multiple identifiers is vulnerable to identity theft and other cybersecurity attacks, suggesting that this can be avoided by the implementation of a single approach such as the national identification system (NIDS).

Green was speaking at the CISCON virtual conference hosted by the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at Northern Caribbean University (NCU) on November 23, 2022, under the theme ‘Cyber security — evolving to meet global challenges’.

He commended NCU for being a leader in technology in Jamaica and encouraged the institution to support the Government’s public education campaign concerning cybersecurity, technology, and the benefits of NIDS. In commending NCU for staging the CISCON conference at a time like this, Minister Green said, “You have truly established yourself as a treasure university in Jamaica.”

Pointing to the evolving global digital economy, Green said that several systems in the Jamaican economy were in the process of transitioning to digital products and services. He stated that digitisation is the direction in which the world is going and that Jamaica, through the Government, must keep up or be left behind.

The minister assured his audience that the Government’s goal is not to track the location and activities of citizens but to ensure that critical and necessary information needed on individuals can be easily and safely accessed and secured without multiple avenues for possible cyberattacks and inefficiencies. NIDS, he argued, will modernise Jamaica as it will allow for easier access to government benefits, easier e-commerce, and easier transactions with State agencies.

According to the minister, the Government will be having a massive public education drive going into the first quarter of next year. He solicited the support of persons who know technology and are experts to assist the Administration in its efforts.

“I think NCU and other institutions have a big role to play. I think your students, your faculty will be critical, and we want to engage you also, we want to engage our population about this [digital transformation] and help them in relation to digital literacy,” he said.