JAMAICA has attempted to unify its government systems before. Agencies have digitised services, automated forms, and upgraded online platforms yet Jamaicans moving from one ministry to another still often restart the same process, submitting documents to disconnected agencies operating separate systems.

Now, one week before the start of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, the Government is pushing what may be its most ambitious attempt yet to digitally connect parts of the State — an effort officials say gained urgency after Hurricane Melissa, which struck the island on October 28 last year, exposed weaknesses in how agencies coordinated information and response efforts during the crisis.

At the centre of that effort is a plan to reposition Jamaica’s ICT Authority as what Audrey Marks, minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for efficiency, innovation and digital transformation, described as an “integrator of services across government”.

“One of the things that we are focused on is bringing all those systems together on the back end,” Marks said during a presentation at the Fujitsu Americas Business Kick-off (ABKO) event held at the Moon Palace resort in St Ann last week.

Marks argued that one of the biggest obstacles to faster and more efficient public services has been the tendency of agencies to protect and operate their own independent systems rather than share infrastructure and data across government.

The Government is also pursuing what Marks described as a broader “one ID” framework designed to allow Jamaicans to access multiple public services through a single identification system rather than repeatedly submitting documents across agencies.

“The idea behind it is that persons must be able to have one ID to enter any institution and not be asked for three pieces of documents,” Marks told the audience.

The event, hosted by Fujitsu, brought together regional government officials, technology executives and public-sector leaders to discuss disaster resilience, artificial intelligence and digital government systems across the Caribbean. It was hosted in Jamaica as part of the company’s contribution to Jamaica’s recovery from Hurricane Melissa.

The renewed push comes after Melissa caused roughly US$12 billion in damage last year, disrupting communications, electricity, transportation and government operations across sections of the island while triggering one of the country’s largest reconstruction efforts in recent years.

But officials and technology executives involved in recovery discussions say the storm exposed more than damaged infrastructure. It also revealed how difficult coordination becomes when agencies, communications systems and information platforms cannot easily communicate during a national emergency.

Mervyn Eyre, CEO of Fujitsu Caribbean and a member of the technology recovery and resilience task force established under the Office of the Prime Minister following Melissa, described the challenge from inside the recovery response.

“One of the great learnings that we had from Melissa was that there was a need for a more integrated view of things,” Eyre told the Jamaica Observer in an interview following the event.

He said agencies, donors and emergency responders often struggled to maintain a unified real-time picture of where assistance was needed most urgently, what infrastructure had failed and how resources should be deployed across affected communities.

“Data and information and the speed of delivering it is probably the greatest enabler of a relief effort,” Eyre told Sunday Finance.

The communications breakdown during the storm also exposed how dependent modern disaster response has become on resilient digital systems after sections of the island lost internet and telecommunications access during the recovery effort.

“We lost communication in a very serious way,” Eyre said. “Starlink became an answer.”

The experience reinforced how quickly coordination efforts can slow when communications networks fail during a national emergency.

Fujitsu executives said the company is exploring the idea of a unified disaster information platform for Jamaica as part of broader conversations around disaster coordination and digital resilience following Melissa.

The Government’s wider digitisation push also extends into areas such as land administration, electronic transactions and backend public-sector processing systems.

Cheriese Walcott, CEO of the National Land Agency and Commissioner of Lands, said the agency is moving to digitise land titles and records as part of efforts to modernise Jamaica’s land management systems and reduce transaction delays.

“We will remove the bureaucracy,” Walcott said, while outlining plans for a fully digital environment for land-related services.

Eyre said Fujitsu has already completed digitisation work with the Registrar General’s Department involving birth, death and other vital records dating back decades, while similar digitisation efforts are now under way at the National Land Agency.

Jamaica has announced digital modernisation initiatives before, many of which slowed amid fragmented systems, uneven implementation and resistance across agencies protective of their own platforms and administrative structures.

When asked to identify the single biggest obstacle to digital transformation in the Caribbean, Eyre did not point to software or financing.

“People,” he said. “The biggest challenge we have is leadership. Getting our leadership to become more digitally aware, to understand their roles and responsibilities in breaking down barriers.”

Marks’s portfolio exists largely to tackle those barriers from the centre of Government. But whether the latest push succeeds may ultimately depend less on technology than on whether agencies are willing to surrender some degree of operational independence in favour of more integrated systems. Melissa, however, may have changed the urgency surrounding those reforms.

“Out of the disaster, we have a major opportunity,” Marks said. She argued that the scale of reconstruction and the weaknesses exposed during the recovery effort have created momentum for reforms that might otherwise have taken years to implement across government agencies.

Executives at the Fujitsu event argued that disaster resilience is increasingly being measured not only by roads, bridges and physical infrastructure, but also by how effectively governments can coordinate information, maintain communications and continue operating during crises.

As another hurricane season approaches, Jamaica’s latest push toward digital government is now being shaped not only by the pursuit of efficiency, but also by the lessons of how quickly fragmented systems can become liabilities during a national crisis.

MARKS…Out of the disaster, we have a major opportunity. (Garfield Robinson)