In our first Year Ahead reflection, What We Do Together, we shared a commitment to working more in the open. After a year of workshopping, (semi)monthly newsletters, publishing essays (many more stuck in drafts), discussion forums and talks, we wanted to close out 2024 with a retrospective. Moving forward, these “Retrospective” essays will wrap each year, providing highlights from our work, sharing context on our intentions, and celebrating the work we are doing together as a community.

We are immensely grateful to each of you who takes the time to read these updates, share them with colleagues, show up for events, send emails with your thoughts, and contribute your experiences and expertise to the problems we’re working on.

Moving faster towards a Jamaica and Caribbean region that works for all of us requires all of our efforts. Thank you for your willingness to do some of this important work with us at the SlashRoots Foundation.

Without further ado, check out SlashRoots’ 2024 Retrospective.

- David & Matthew

Foundations for a Different Kind of Transformation Agenda

At SlashRoots, we believe that to accelerate our progress in the Caribbean, we must distribute the ability to solve problems across the entire society.

If we are to outpace the rapidly evolving challenges we face and the growing impatience of our people, this is something we must do. But making this shift requires introducing new ways of working, broadening participation in problem-solving, and, in some cases, creating new institutions. And this work needs to take place across government, the private sector, and societal actors.

In 2024, we began setting the foundations for new ways for civil society to contribute to the challenges of place-making and public participation in decision-making. We’d like to share some of those updates with you.

OneCity’s First Contributions to Jamaica’s Urban Planning and Public Participation Discourse

We launched the OneCity Initiative in December 2023 alongside the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI), Mona GeoInformatics, and FightForPeace. This action research and design initiative aims to create more effective pathways for communities and young people to shape the direction of their environment and the institutions that serve them.

Throughout the year, the teams have met with various public institutions, researchers and community advocates to discuss urban governance and the state of community engagement in local decision-making. Towards the end of the year, we were able to share the initiative’s first contributions to the public discourse. In December, we previewed the OneCity Explorer and index–an effort to create a holistic measure of how well each community across our country supports integration into mainstream society. You can check out the launch here.

Through another component of the project, we examine the effectiveness of the different ways public and private institutions engage communities in decisions that affect their lives. We held our first problem discovery workshop in November, and the discussions were compelling. The energy in the room matched what we had been hearing from stakeholder interviews. There is a lot of interest and shared recognition of the need to reform how institutions work with communities to make decisions. We’ll ramp up consultations and generative discussion during the first half of this year, including a follow-up workshop held virtually on January 24th. If that sounds like something you’d like to contribute to, you can register here to join us.

Co-Creating Jamaica’s Second OGP National Action Plan

We worked with the Ministry of Finance & the Public Service, civil society and other public sector organisations to craft Jamaica's Second Open Government Partnership National Action Plan (NAP). OGP provides an alternative model for collaboration between the reformers within the public sector and civil society on priority initiatives.

The Second National Action Plan builds on the momentum and commitment areas of Jamaica’s first National Action Plan, with updated activities and proposals crafted by joint public sector and civil society working groups. Commitments range from Anti-Corruption reforms to revitalising Jamaica’s Open Data and Access to Information infrastructure to several important environmental reforms that strengthen regulations and safeguards. The implementation window for the new National Action Plan begins in January and runs until 2026. One of the priorities in the new cycle is to further open up the policy process through better communication and improved working group collaboration.

We also supported Jamaica’s contributions to the OGP community at the regional level. Matthew attended the Regional OGP Summit in Brasilia, where he participated in a high-level panel on the Future Of Open Government with Sanjay Pradhan, OGP’s CEO, and 14 representatives of governments and civil society.

A Collective Reimagining of What Digital Can Mean for Our Region

There is a great wave of change underway across the world because of advances in digital technology. The Caribbean is no different. At SlashRoots, we believe that these changes provide our region with an opportunity to think differently about how our society works and the institutions that support it. But if we are to successfully create a Jamaica and a Caribbean region that is different from our present and avoid the mistakes of our past, we have to be intentional in articulating and building towards the community that we want. We started the Digital Democracy Series to create space for this reimagining.

The discussion series brings together experts, policymakers, and civil society to interrogate existing ways of working, highlight alternative approaches and solutions from across the globe and the region, and generate new ideas for what the Caribbean’s approach could be.

We held two forums in 2024. In the first discussion, we asked what it would take for everyone in our community to have trusted ways to establish who they are. Using Jamaica’s NIDS as the context, we discussed ongoing scepticism of the initiative and new ways it might create value for everyday Jamaicans. Critically, the discussants highlighted that universal access to identification required more than just introducing a new technology.

The second forum looked at the role that trust plays in unlocking the wide adoption of digital systems. It was fascinating to unpack with the speakers and attendees the different practices and considerations organisations are using and can employ to build trust, especially in contexts where trust is low within the broader society or at the organisational level.

If you missed either of these discussions, we encourage you to check them out on our YouTube page. We greatly appreciate the community’s feedback, support, and contributions to this undertaking. We’ll continue the series in 2025 and look forward to holding more space for these important discussions.

Caribbean Perspectives. Global Dialogue

Contributing to global discussions and institution building has been an important part of SlashRoots’ mission since its inception. In 2024, we helped shape some consequential global goods at the UN, regionally, and with like-minded civil society organisations across the globe.

A Global Framework for Safe and Inclusive Digital Public Infrastructure

Back in April, we shared that Matthew was selected by the Office of the UN Secretary General’s Envoy on Technology and the UN Development Programme to serve on a working group for the Universal DPI Safeguards Initiative. Forty-four global experts, including two others from the Caribbean, were charged with creating a framework for member states as part of a global consultative process.

Together, the working group developed the Universal DPI Safeguards Framework, which was released at the UN General Assembly. Its publication coincided with 193 member states endorsing the Global Digital Compact (GDC) as part of the UN Pact for the Future. In the GDC, member states recognised the importance of safeguards for DPI and their potential for promoting inclusive digital transformation.

For more than a decade, civil society, academics, and other public interest actors have been saying that regardless of how transformative the digital public infrastructure approach might be, it will not be enough if we don’t get the values, governance, and safeguards right. At the UN General Assembly and the Global DPI Summit in Cairo, DPI Safeguards were very much part of the centre stage. The Framework is a major milestone that provides an overarching set of principles and an operational knowledge base to inform the implementation of DPI projects.

Several DPI efforts are underway in the region, such as Jamaica’s National ID card (NIDS), the Dominican Republic’s Carpeta Ciudadana, and Trinidad and Tobago’s National ID. The Dominican Republic is already operationalising the UN DPI Safeguards, and we look forward to seeing and supporting other Caribbean governments in doing the same.

Contributing to the EU, Latin America and the Caribbean Policy Dialogue

The EU-LAC Digital Alliance is a flagship initiative under the EU’s Global Gateway strategy. It fosters digital cooperation between Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean and aims to strengthen partnerships in digital transformation by promoting equitable access to technology, advancing governance frameworks, and enhancing digital infrastructure.

In May, our Senior Service Designer, Denique Soutar, represented the organisations at the EU-LAC Digital Alliance High-Level Policy Dialogue on E-Governance, held in San José, Costa Rica. This event brought together stakeholders, including government leaders, civil society, and private sector representatives, to address shared priorities such as cross-border cooperation, interoperability, and the implementation of digital public services.

The dialogue underscored the importance of collaboration between regions to address common challenges, such as the digital divide, and leverage technology for societal progress. We continue to advocate for better approaches to expanding inclusion in digital transformation efforts across the Caribbean and elsewhere. Impacting the policy choices in regional mechanisms and large markets, like the EU, provides another channel to advance this goal.

A Global Coalition for Inclusive and Rights-Respecting Digital ID

SlashRoots is a founding member of the Human Rights For Identity (HR4ID) Coalition, a transnational civil society coalition dedicated to advancing human rights in the design and implementation of digital identity systems. The coalition, comprising over 50 civil society organisations worldwide, was formally launched at the 2023 Internet Governance Forum in Japan. It hosted a public session attended by the United Nations Secretary General’s Envoy on Technology, Amandeep Singh.

The H4ID coalition identified multiple priority initiatives for 2024. These included strengthening information sharing across the network, collaborating on multilateral engagement (including outreach to the World Bank, convenings for the UN Universal Safeguards Initiative and contributing to Brazil’s G20 Presidency), conducting a mapping of digital ID legislation across countries and working together to develop common positions and resources on critical policy issues. The legislative map and the common positions are expected to be published in early 2025. Denique will represent SlashRoots at the 2025 staging of RightsCon in Taiwan, where the mapping project and the first common positions are expected to be previewed.

New Experiments for Change

SlashRoots is proud to have been selected for the 2024 FORGE Experiments for Change programme. This initiative supports experimental approaches to addressing systemic challenges and transforming the fields of global rights and justice. Our project, “Citizen Participation for the Rollout of Jamaica’s National Digital ID,” was one of only four projects chosen this year, placing us among the programme’s inaugural cohort.

Our project focuses on designing meaningful opportunities for citizen participation during the rollout of Jamaica’s National Digital ID system. Through public dialogues, workshops, and co-creation sessions, we aim to ensure the system respects human rights and meets the diverse needs of Jamaica’s population. This initiative underscores the importance of rights-respecting digital frameworks and highlights the power of inclusive, citizen-centred design.

We extend our gratitude to the NYU Center for Human Rights and Global Justice for their support, and we look forward to collaborating with the FORGE team to advance solutions to this critical issue.

A New Dimension to SlashRoots – An In-House Policy Team

Our ambition is to make SlashRoots the best place in the Caribbean to do socially impactful work at scale. This year, we took another step towards this vision by adding an in-house Policy Team.

Gavin Myers – Policy Lead
Gavin Myers brings extensive experience as a community engagement researcher and strategist. He led outreach programmes for the National Integrity Action (NIA) and developed citizen engagement frameworks that bridge the gap between communities and policymakers.

Gavin is also completing his PhD at the Open University, where his research focuses on the collaboration strategies of Caribbean diaspora organisations. He is leading SlashRoots' new Active Citizenship Programme Area, through which we aim to build more effective and expansive social partnerships across the region.

Amillea Moore – Policy Analyst
Amillea Moore joins us with a strong background in community and economic development. She holds an MSc in International Public and Development Management from UWI Mona and previously worked at ProjectStar, where she designed employability training pathways for underserved populations.

As a member of the Policy Team, Amillea supports projects across the SlashRoots portfolio, particularly our work on Jamaica’s Open Government Programme and OneCity research on Jamaica’s public participation ecosystem.

Gavin and Amillea have brought fresh perspectives, skills, and energy to SlashRoots. We’re excited about the new capabilities they bring to the team and look forward to continuing this journey together.

Looking Ahead

As we begin 2025, we are energised by the progress and partnerships we’ve built. The challenges facing Jamaica and the Caribbean are complex, but they also present opportunities for innovation, collaboration, and transformation.

We remain committed to tackling these challenges head-on, anchored in our values and driven by a deep commitment to accelerating our progress as a region.

We close how we began. Moving faster towards a Jamaica and Caribbean region that works for all of us requires all of our efforts. With deep sincerity, thank you for your willingness to do some of this important work with us at the SlashRoots Foundation. We’re excited to continue working alongside you to take hold of what’s possible for our region in 2025 and beyond.

Onwards and upwards, ever.

David and Matthew.

We had opportunities to make a case for our ideas on new Caribbean and pan-African platforms. 

In particular, I want to express my appreciation to Michelle Marius and the ICT Pulse team. Michelle has been a torchbearer for ICT policy and regional collaboration for over a decade. In May, she hosted David and me on her ICT Pulse podcast (more on that below). Michelle also reached the impressive milestone of 300 podcast episodes in May. This is an amazing testament to her commitment and consistency in serving the region. Congratulations, Michelle!

In May’s newsletter, we share more about the podcast and other developments.

Thank you for continuing on this journey with us.

Onward and Upward 

Matthew

ICT PULSE PODCAST FEATURE

Talking Caribbean Futures and Digital Public Infrastructure on the ICT Pulse Podcast

David and I joined Michele Marius on Episode 301 of the ICT Pulse Podcast to talk about digital public infrastructure, the importance of anchoring digital transformation in a clear vision for the kind of Caribbean region we want to create, and how an infrastructure approach to digitisation can accelerate our progress.
 
I really enjoyed the discussion. One of David's points during a segment discussing whether governments should make new digital systems mandatory for citizens stood out to me, and I wanted to share it here.

You can listen the full conversation on your favourite podcast player or on the ICT Pulse website.

SLASHROOTS ON THE ROAD

EU-LAC Digital Alliance High-Level Policy Dialogue on E-Governance - San Jose, Costa Rica

Denique Soutar, SlashRoots Senior Service Designer, travelled to San Jose, Costa Rica, for a high-level bi-regional policy dialogue on e-governance priorities between Caribbean, Latin American, and European Union stakeholders.

Participants included senior government representatives, the private sector, civil society, and academia. This was the second in-person event in a discussion series organised by the EU-LAC Digital Alliance focused on advancing a framework for cooperation. The discussion centred on cross-border cooperation, interoperability, and cross-border electronic identity.

The discussions aim to co-develop an agenda and roadmap for bi-regional cooperation and achieve policy-level agreements in time for the EU-CELAC Summit in 2025.

ID4Africa Annual General Meeting (AGM) - Cape Town, South Africa

At the end of May, Matthew travelled to Cape Town, South Africa, for the 2024 ID4Africa Annual General Meeting, organised under the theme “Digital Identity as DPI: Fostering Trust, Inclusion, and Adoption.”

ID4Africa is the only pan-African movement dedicated to helping African nations build their strategic capacity to develop robust and responsible identity ecosystems for development and humanitarian action.

I convened a panel titled “Building Trust, Protecting Human Rights: Demystifying Civil Society’s Contribution to Legal Identity for All” focused on how civil society, media, and academia across Africa and other parts of the world are working to achieve universal access to a legal identity.

I was invited to conduct this discussion because of the effective multi-stakeholder discussions I helped to organise.

It was a solid session and worth watching to if you want to hear more about the new kinds of collaboration that African organisations are pursuing in relation to digital identity and digital transformation efforts across the continent.

UPDATES

NIDS Regulations Tabled in Parliament

The Jamaican government took another step towards implementing a new foundational identity system in May, with the Senate approving the National Identification and Registration Act regulations on May 31st. In the coming weeks, it will go before Parliament.

We are currently in the process of reviewing the regulations and will share our analysis when it is complete.

MAY GOOD READS

Here are some of the stories our team has been thinking about this month :

Civil Registration and Vital Statistics and Digital Public Infrastructure

The UNDP and partners have been engaged in a series of dialogues on the importance of integrating civil registration and vital statistics systems with digital public infrastructure to improve service delivery, safeguard human rights, and ‘accelerate progress towards the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals’.

Click to read on the UNDP Blog

Constitutional Reform Town Hall Meeting: Safeguarding Human Rights

Jamaicans for Justice have been hosting a series of town halls focused on Jamaica’s Constitutional Reform process. In the third town hall of the series, panellists the Hon. B St. Michael Hylton, O.J. (attorney-at-law, K.C.); Dr. Maziki Thame (political scientist), and Professor Trevor Munroe (Founding Director, National Integrity Action) discuss their concerns with the Constitutional Reform Committee’s recommendations.

• JFJ Townhall (Nationwide 90 FM broadcast)

• Report of the Constitutional Reform Committee (May 2024)

Hello friends,

Welcome to SlashRoots' first annual letter. David and I plan to use these letters to reflect on SlashRoots' work and speak frankly about the progress we are making and where we are not.

2024 will be 13 years since we hosted SlashRoots’ first hackathon, organised around the release of Jamaica’s first open data platform. In that time, SlashRoots has lived multiple lives.

The SlashRoots Hackathon became Developing the Caribbean (DevCa), a regional innovation festival with hackathons and conferences held simultaneously in as many as six islands and with more than 340 participants at its peak. We've helped shape policies and legislation on open data, data protection, digital identity and digital literacy.

In 2017, we co-founded the Caribbean School of Data, a regional digital skills-building initiative that helped upskill thousands of young people across the region.

Throughout this time, our cornerstone has been using human-centred design practices to help organisations better understand and make progress on complex problems. We've worked on challenges ranging from praedial larceny and electricity theft to assisting individuals in managing non-communicable diseases.

When we felt problems required new institutions, we worked with others to create them and have done so both in Jamaica and globally for open government, civic tech and digital ID.

While we believe that SlashRoots has done positive and impactful work since its inception, we also recognise that the problems we face as a society are rapidly increasing in complexity and dynamism.

Whether adapting to the existential tradeoffs created by a warming planet or helping communities strive in a digital world where the future of work and its present are changing rapidly, new approaches are needed to respond to our evolving problems in the timeframes needed. 

The Caribbean's current pace of development and the siloed, institutional responses that are commonplace will not suffice. Our region is already the most unequal in the world, and the uncertainties we face risk adding rocket fuel to the disparities that plague us.

David and I believe changing this trajectory requires opening spaces for reimagining how we look at problems and the roles available to solve them. We must create new entry points for more actors from across government, markets, AND civil society to work together. There are knowledge and capacities within communities and civil society that are being ignored. Distributing the ability and opportunity to solve problems will unlock new pathways for ideating and creating solutions to outpace the exponential nature of the problems we face.

Mobilising this kind of collaboration and building a body of evidence for this approach is at the heart of what we aim to do this year and over the next decade.

A shift in how we work.

Cultivating spaces for collaboration and experimentation starts with being more open in our own work. While we have always worked closely with those affected by the problems we work on, we could have done a better job sharing the progress and outcomes with our community to gain a broader perspective and enable additional contributions.

This annual letter and the monthly newsletter we started publishing in October last year are the beginning of our commitment to work and learn in the open.

Cultivating spaces for collaboration and reimagination will also include creating spaces for discourse, as we are doing with the Digital Democracy Series. In our first session, we began to wrestle with how we all might think differently about inclusion as digitisation gathers pace. We will return to the topic of inclusion and its intersection with many other themes throughout the year.

Many of the problems we are struggling with as a society have yet to be solved at scale. Making progress will require acquiring new knowledge, know-how and connections. A shift to openness is not just a nice-to-have, but strategically advantageous. Engaging more societal actors around the problems can accelerate our learning, leverage a wider capacity to solve, and build the momentum needed for adoption.

Last year, we helped secure Jamaica's commitment to another Open Government Partnership (OGP) action plan cycle. While OGP isn't well-known across Jamaica yet, its structure, which requires and provides space for high levels of collaboration between innovators within the public sector and civil society, is a unique opportunity to develop an institutional mechanism for scaling diverse and open collaboration. This is a hypothesis we aim to explore this year as we work with the Ministry of Finance (the host Ministry) and other members of the multi-stakeholder forum (the OGP oversight body) to build on the lessons from the last two years.

Inclusion at the centre of society’s transformation

A rapid digitisation of society is underway around us. One of our great fears is that this digital transformation replicates and amplifies the biases and inequities we all see around us daily in the software and digitised processes being developed. Avoiding that future requires greater intentionality.

We’ve observed that the teams implementing these digital services and the decision-makers who shape policies are often unaware or aren’t given the time and resources to understand how exclusion, harm and suboptimal outcomes can manifest in their work. Additionally, stakes are even higher today as governments across the region implement new foundation systems for identity, payments and exchanging data to enable citizen participation in an increasingly digital world. This new "digital public infrastructure" will significantly increase the visibility of the individual to society, and we must be thoughtful in their realisation.

In response to these challenges and the scale of digitisation, we are expanding our human-centred design work from focusing only on specific services and problems to include initiatives that make it easier for teams and organisations to better engage with those impacted by their work. The only sustainable way to build services that meet the needs of your users is to engage them in the design of those services. Later this year, we will launch a new Inclusion and Usability initiative built around this belief.

We will also deepen our engagement with the implementation of Digital Public Infrastructure across the region and the new ecosystems that will emerge around them. We are starting with Jamaica’s new national ID system (NIDS). Building on our earlier contributions to the NIDS’ drafting of the NIDS law, we are following it as it transitions to operationalisation. From the regulations to the Project Birthright campaign and the expansion of the pilot, we aim to make contributions to help realise a new national ID that is inclusive, safe, and rights-respecting.

The Role of Civil Society Organizations

Lastly, we want to share some reflections on the changes we are observing in Jamaica’s public discourse.

The Internet has given us a platform to reach the entire human population. We have access to more information and are more connected to each other than ever. This has strengthened transparency and provided new ways to engage with and hold leaders and institutions accountable. But it is also enabling cruelty and divisiveness to take root in our discourse.

We believe all calls to marginalise, dehumanise or position any Jamaican as an outsider are wrong. Our motto, "Out of many, One People", is a clear rebuke of this rhetoric.

We should always remember that we are all members of this Jamaican society first. We are not consumers of products, voters or subjects to be governed, nor government representatives or members of political parties foremost. We are members of this community. As members of this community, we have standing to engage in, ask questions, and contribute to shaping its direction.

Our national project requires contributions from all of us. It doesn’t function without civil society and community-based contributors. What we need are more effective and scalable ways to mediate issues and tradeoffs as a community–not the marginalisation and painting of any specific organisation or individual as a pariah.

Building scalable options for citizen co-creation is core to SlashRoots' mission. We want to expand the number of persons who feel they are making meaningful contributions to our shared national and regional goals. 

2024 and beyond

2024 represents another year, one for us as a team. In 2023, we re-examined and sharpened our articulation of our purpose and long-term goals and brought on new team members to help us execute. We're excited to move into the next phase of our new strategy.

This is the work we hope to do over the next year. This is the work we hope to do with you.

Onwards and upwards. 

David & Matthew

It has been 11 years since the name SlashRoots was first conceptualized. The name was inspired by a play on a “Roots.Rock.Reggae” t-shirt I owned and the Linux operating system’s shortcut to getting to the “home” folder (~/) — getting you “/roots”. Yea, it was pretty nerdy (and not something most people could read, so we ended up spelling out the name). Back then, our motivation was straightforward. Digital technologies like smartphones, web 2.0, and social media were rapidly changing the world around us, democratizing who could create value and who had a voice on the Internet.

We wanted to channel those forces toward persistent challenges we saw across the Jamaican landscape. Could digital technology provide those coming of age in this Internet era with a better path to improve Jamaican society? A lot has changed since we posed that question in the first SlashRoots/dev conference and hackathon. We hosted a few more conferences and formed an organization to create a space where like-minded individuals could explore that question. There were some wins, many mistakes, and hard-earned lessons learned.

Towards the end of last year, the SlashRoots team sat down to reexamine why we do this work, what success looks like for ourselves and the communities we wanted to impact, and the areas we needed to improve to be more effective. In the discussions, a few core motivations stood out.

The Caribbean’s transition to a “digital society” can only be viewed as successful if, through the process, we make our society more equitable, enabling all members to benefit. Latin America and the Caribbean is the most unequal region in the world. Each year, tens of thousands of people leave because they don’t believe there is a path to their individual and family success here. If all we achieve by transitioning to a digital society is to create a few new winners while replicating existing patterns of exclusion as code, we would have failed.

Digital enables us as a country, maybe for the first time, to provide the best we have to offer to every Jamaican, regardless of where they are. Uptown, inner-city, country. One’s location no longer has to mean limitations on access to quality education, meaningful work and career opportunities, or effective public services and social support. Scale, localization, and accessibility for all members of our community are within reach, if we prioritize it. Not only is this the right thing to do, but a growing body of research tells us that services designed to meet the needs of the vulnerable and differently-abled benefit the entire population.

This isn’t naive digital optimism. Connectivity and access are important considerations for building inclusive services. But building digital services does not mean only using digital channels–it means active thoughtfulness of multi-model service delivery. This means more effective offline, paper-based, and face-to-face engagement.

Building great services that people want to use (and have the desired impact) requires changing how those services are built. In too many organizations, especially in government, the decisions that shape how services are implemented primarily flow from top to bottom. Doing one’s job well is measured by compliance with directives received and accomplishing a task within the time allotted, unbothered by whether this meets the needs and priorities of those affected by its implementation. This has to change. Building services centred around the needs of the people you want to use them, through incremental iterations, to learn quickly and cheaply, isn’t an unproven fringe idea. This is table stakes for the companies succeeding in the Internet era.

Realizing a future that resonates with these values is the work our team articulated for itself. This led us to articulate a new mission for SlashRoots.

To leverage digital to make the promise of Jamaica real for everyone.

One of my favourite quotes comes from Miles Davis: “…Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself”. Our team’s internal conversation, and the mission it’s produced, feel like another step in understanding who we are and what motivates us. It will provide a lens to examine our work for the next phase. Many have contributed to this journey. Thank you. I want you to know we’re still working to make good on that founding idea.

In my next post, I’ll go into what we mean by the ideas in the mission. Until then, onwards and upwards, ever!

* This idea is a remix of an excerpt from Katherine Benjamin’s, Deputy CIO of NY, essay on how digital service teams can be more effective. She originally wrote, “building great products that people love to use means changing the way of building those products.”

On Wednesday, April 5, 2021, The NIDS Focus Coalition — a coalition of civil society organizations — will present before Jamaica’s Parliament on the National Identification and Registration Bill. The Bill creates a legal framework for Jamaica’s National Identification System (NIDS) — a biometric digital ID system designed to support Jamaica’s transition to a “digital society.” After careful study, the Coalition has identified key issues with the proposed approach that must be addressed before rollout of NIDS continues. On Wednesday, we will outline these concerns and proposed solutions.

The NIDS Focus Coalition is comprised of 13 organizations with a shared intention to ensure that Jamaica’s National Identification System delivers a promise of social inclusion and improved access to legal identification in a manner that fully respects the human rights of all Jamaicans; preserves the security and privacy of their information, and safeguards against the dangers inherent in mass collection of personal data. The Coalition is co-convened by Jamaicans for Justice and The SlashRoots Foundation. Participating organizations represent diverse sectors of society including human rights, technology, governance, youth, gender, law, and disabilities.

In 2017 the Jamaican government passed a version of the National Identification and Registration Bill which was then struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 2019. In December 2020, the government tabled a fresh Bill and established a Parliamentary Committee to review it and receive submissions from the public. In February 2021, The Coalition made a submission to the Parliament that outlined a series of concerns and proposed approaches to address them.

The Coalition is not opposed to the concept of a National ID in Jamaica. A system established in a people-centred and rights-respecting manner would benefit the Jamaican public. However, when these systems are not designed inclusively or without effective safeguards, flaws in their implementation can have far-reaching implications, including human rights violations. “We evaluated what circumstances the Bill could make possible now and, in the future, and have identified concerns that, if addressed, can make NIDS a considerably more balanced, people-centred, and secure system,” said Matthew McNaughton, Principal of the SlashRoots Foundation.

“We must remember that NIDS is being designed today, but it will potentially last for generations and take on new technological innovations. We must, therefore, take great care today in how we design the legal architecture,” said Rodje Malcolm, Executive Director of Jamaicans for Justice

How to engage

The Parliamentary proceedings will be streamed live on the Public Broadcasting Corporation of Jamaica’s YouTube and Facebook. A recording will be made available via the aforementioned channels.

- END -

For further information contact:

• Rodje Malcolm — (876) 329–0320 / Malcolm@jamaicansforjustice.org

• Matthew McNaughton (330) 828–6717 / Matthew@slahroots.org

Too many of us are accustomed to not having a voice, leaving officials (whom we may or may not have voted for) to make decisions that affect not just our current quality of life, but also our future. Our Tell Your MP pilot project gives people an opportunity to influence how Member of Parliament Julian Robinson uses the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) allotted to South East St. Andrew, and to do so with comfort and convenience.

If you live, work or study in South East St. Andrew, you have until January 31 to share ideas for community development projects that mean the most to you. Visit TellYourMP.com.jm to share the problems or opportunities you think are most important, and what you think should be done to address these issues. If you’re a tech-minded, solution-oriented youth, your ideas could win funding from a separate Youth Innovation Grant.

Ordinarily, there are a lot of things competing for the attention of Members of Parliament. Currently, the CDF public consultation meetings provide the main opportunity for citizens to give feedback on proposed community development projects, and propose some of their own. Most people aren’t able to attend these meetings, whether due to location, timing or accessibility, among other reasons. Yet, as the saying goes, ‘it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease’. It’s the people who speak up and do so often who get the attention they seek.

We firmly believe that you should never underestimate the power of your unique perspective on any issue. Just ‘squeak’.

Tell Your MP amplifies your squeak: not only do you get to share your idea, you also get to vote on which ideas should be funded. So far, Tell Your MP has received a range of ideas, from mentorship to environmental improvement. Even if a community project already exists — say for instance a reading programme — you can submit an idea that leads to improvements in how it is delivered, and how lives are changed. It just takes you a few minutes to submit it!

We all know that our government has limited resources. Let’s move past that by contributing where we can. As a citizen, you can be one of those pairs of eyes on the ground to see if something is working as it should be, or, if it’s not yet a thing, that it could work. We do not have to leave it as verandah talk, but with Tell Your MP we can actually take the idea forward.

This project is for everyone, and that’s why the Youth Innovation Grant was also included. If you are 16–30 years old and live in the constituency, you can submit an idea for using technology or data to address a community problem. You could be awarded seed funding, a tablet and a place at the DIA Urban Lab for Youth Innovation, all to help you develop your idea.

I’m writing this in-between flights on the way back from St Lucia where we just held our first open data meet-up, part of a six-month process to support the local IT community in building digital products to serve their citizens.

This work goes back to an open data bootcamp we held on the island in May in collaboration with the World Bank and Code for Africa to commemorate the launch of the Government’s Open Data Portal. At that meetup we shared examples of how open data was being used to help people in other parts of the world and got them to start thinking about problems and products they could create for St Lucians.

Meet-up events to help St Lucians, Jamaicans build products from open data

Our new goal is to start fast-tracking those products from concepts into hands of every day citizens. SlashRoots’ role was to host the event and together with the mentors, like Dr. Lyndell St. James and the other members of the St Lucia ICT Association, to kickstart the process.

At this stage in a project, there can be 101 considerations, but chief of all has to be identifying the problem. Oftentimes in life we have these big problems but what about solving a piece of the problem without taking on the whole world all at once? It could be a seemingly small part of the larger problem that really bugs people and so solving that you can make a lot of people’s lives a little bit easier.

So, for example, one group at the meet-up wanted to fix traffic, which is a problem in Castries just as it in Kingston! And in fact, they have a major problem that we don’t have, which is that when cruise ships dock gridlock worsens!

Practical solutions to real problems facing Caribbean societies

The suggestion that came was to create something like Waze, the community-based traffic and navigation app, which of course is a huge task and something that already exists. So what about if instead we looked for that easier win?

So from that big idea, meet-up attendees are now investigating how best to simply send a notification to local persons that the ship is docking. Drivers can then either avoid the harbour front, or if they are a taxi driver head down there looking for business.

It’s always a great experience for us to be collaborating with peers from other Caribbean islands. While the IT community in St Lucia is still growing there are definitely people interested in building digital solutions. They come from both the public and private sector and range from novices to professionals — and that really is no different to Jamaica.

We want to build a community from the meet-ups

That’s why events like this are needed to galvanise the local community as a first step in building things that can have a larger, positive impact on our Caribbean societies.

And that’s why we’ll be having our first meet-up in Kingston, next Thursday 6pm at Hub Coworking on Lady Musgrave Road! An invite has already gone out to attendees who attended the previous bootcamp and registration is on a first come basis.

The meet-ups will help attendees produce work — whether an app or data visualisations over the next six months. Mentors will be on hand to guide you and your fellow collaborators — whether you be a civil servant, NGO worker, journalist, developer or just someone with a keen interest in solving problems that affect their community. Join us!

You can register here.

At our recent Data Protection Act Town Hall, two common sentiments shared among the presenters and participants were: Too few Jamaicans understood the broad implications of this bill; and more education and engagement is needed!

At the Town Hall we had outlined four scenarios that reflect how the legislation will impact everyday citizens. Suffice to say it is highly probable that you or your organization could find yourself in at least one such scenario:

• James a recovered drug addict who is worried about how data from his past could affect his ability to move on with his life.

• Farmer Ricardo wants a loan from his credit union but knows the financial data being used about him is outdated.

• Collett, a small business owner who wants to use customer data from her existing business to start a new venture.

• Tarik is a college student with an idea for a new online dating service targeting Jamaicans.

Name: James Johnson

Scenario: James was formerly a drug addict. When he was suffering from his addiction, he received services from a local NGO, who helped him overcome his addiction and get back on his feet.

He is now trying to move on with his life, but he is worried about how the information he shared with the NGO could affect his job prospects if they were shared.

How the bill affects James:

• With the Data Protection Act, James can request that the NGO disclose what personal data it has about him, how the data is being used, and with whom it has been shared. He can also request a copy of this data.

• James can reject any previous consent he may have given to the NGO to use his data internally or share his data with other entities.

Name: Ricardo Brown

Scenario: Ricardo wants a loan from his credit union to expand his farming business. The credit union pulls his personal data — farmer registration information — from RADA to make loan decisions. However, Ricardo knows that he hasn’t spoken to his RADA extension officer in four years, and his data is outdated.

How the Bill affects Ricardo:

• Ricardo can request that his credit union tell him whether they have made a decision based solely on the automated processing of data from RADA. After being notified, Ricardo has 21 days to require that they reconsider and make a new decision on another basis.

• Ricardo can request that his credit union not make a decision solely based on automatically processing his data from RADA, and instead allow him to provide his updated data.

Name: Collett Simpson

Scenario: Collett is an entrepreneur. She previously ran a business, where she bought and sold designer sandals through her Facebook page. When her main sandals supplier migrated to Canada, she had to shut down the business.

She is now looking to start a new business providing catering services and wants to market to her previous customer base.

How the bill affects Collett:

• Under the proposed Data Protection Act, Collett will need to update her registration information with the Information Commissioner — indicating what data she will now collect and the purpose for its usage.

• She will also need to get consent from her customers before she can start marketing her catering service to them.

• If members of the customer database indicate that they do not want to receive her new products or services, she should not send them marketing information for the new business.

Name: Tarik Johnson

Scenario: Tarik has an idea for a new online dating service targeting Jamaicans. He has developed a prototype for the product and is ready to test market interest with prospective customers.

How the bill affects Tarik:

• Under the Data Protection Act, before he can begin collecting personal data from prospective customers, Tarik will need to register with the Information Commissioner providing, among other details, the specifics of the information he will be collecting for his idea and also appoint a Data Protection Officer to represent his company.

• When signing up new customers, he will have to communicate why the data is being collected and how it will be used.

• When deciding whether to store data in the cloud, he will have to select hosting locations that have equivalent data protections. If he wants to share their data somewhere without equivalent data protections, he will have to get the consent of his users.

• If his service gets hacked or the data is compromised. He must notify the Information Commissioner of the compromise and potentially, all his users that their data may have been affected.

New Citizen Rights under the Data Protection Act

1. You have the right to access your information
   Any entity that has data about you is now required to communicate to you in plain and accessible language, what personal data they have, how they use it, and who they have shared it with.

2. The Right to Prevent the processing of your personal data if you believe it is likely to cause damage or harm to you.
   - If it is inaccurate, you can change or update it.
   - If the data has been held for longer than necessary, you can prevent it from being used
   - If the data is being used for direct marketing, you can request they desist.
   - You have the right to know how automated decisions are made.

3. The Right to request that no decision is solely based on the automatic processing of personal data.

4. The Right to apply for a data controller to rectify any inaccuracy in any data of which he/she is the subject.

SlashRoots Foundation and Code for Africa are working together to give local journalists new and exciting digital tools: enabling them to mine data for new stories; to tell those stories in new and visually exciting ways; to allow their audiences to interact; and not just to confront the problem but to provide a solution too.

Take this simple example: You might recall a recent storm on social media about a job AD that appeared locally for a domestic worker that offered a very low salary. As a solution, someone at the workshop suggested, we build an online calculator that would accommodate various factors such as travel, and help you pay your helper a decent living wage.

Well, OpenUp, a Code for Africa partner has already built that. And as a non-profit organization, Code for Africa want to make this and other tools available free of charge to local media organisations; together with training developed in conjunction with Google News Academy. SlashRoots is to kick off this process with a series of local meetups (date TBC).

“Journalism is becoming increasingly networked and collaborative,” explains Code for Africa deputy Director Chris Roper, who was formerly Editor-in-Chief of the Mail & Guardian newspaper. He thinks that this can be even greater for us in the Caribbean, where language barriers are relatively lower than in his continent.

“Sweet spots can be journalists concentrating on certain industries — in several African countries Australian mining companies were not using the same safety standards they did in Australia. Newsrooms collaborated across borders and eventually even got a law passed in Australia because of that work. But that could have never happened had a newsroom worked in isolation.”

Can you think of any multinational players operating in the Caribbean that might have such a scandal lurking, but that one media house might not be big enough to go it alone? It’s possible.

Of course it’s not just making the world a better place why local media houses should want to adapt. In a time of falling relevance, decreased readership and revenue — they need to survive.

Code for Africa was in Kingston in 2018 to participate as instructors with SlashRoots at an Open Data Literacy Bootcamp hosted by the World Bank. The second and final bootcamp took place in St Lucia.

Daily we allow our data to be collected and used. Sometimes it is being shared and used without our consent — and these abuses often become known to us only when it is too late, such as in the case of identity theft.

So we need greater awareness and protection in Jamaica; and that is why we at SlashRoots welcome the initiative taken by Government to draft the Data Protection Act. Jamaica will be the first in the Caribbean to pass such legislation. SlashRoots has already submitted our proposed changes to Parliament and we feel that whatever is eventually passed must reflect day-to-day Jamaican realities.

Consider yourself. Maybe that you have given your contact details for something at church. But suddenly that data is being used by a third party; and you’re being contacted using that data for something that is decidedly, non-church!

Brother so-and-so is calling in to ask if you want to join a Pyramid Scheme, because he was able to access your contacts from the church mailing list.

Today, too many individuals and businesses consider personal data as a resource to be acquired and exploited by any means necessary. Some view their customer databases, contact lists and online networks as something to be blasted whenever a new opportunity comes up. And for the rest of us, we get spammed with those unwanted messages — sometimes without any way to stop them!

Many of us use personal data without thinking much about how it was acquired, how it should be used, or how long it should be held. The idea of collecting less data, or worse deleting data that is no longer being used is heresy! But has to change. And the new GOJ’s new Data Protection Act or Right is going to play a big role in getting businesses and individuals to rethink how they manage the personal data of others. As a start, it gives Jamaican citizens some important new data rights:

• The right of consent — individuals must have your consent before they can collect or use your personal data;

• The right to be informed if a business or individual is processing data about you;

• The right to request data about yourself from individuals or businesses;

• The right to have an entity correct data they have on you as an individual;

• The right to request clarification about how the data is being used;

• The right to prevent processing likely to cause damage or distress;

• The right to prevent processing for purposes of direct marketing; and

• The right to determine whether automated data processing can be used.

Globally, support is building for stronger data protection of individual data. This is going to require a culture shift for individuals and businesses. For now, we Jamaicans are not unique in our ignorance of data protection rules: whether as victims or abusers.

What happened globally with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, and locally with lotto scammers accessing data from call centres, shows how real these threats are to us. It shows us that we need to start thinking about how we use the data of others, and how we share our our own data.

While in Cape Town, South Africa, on a recent trip for SlashRoots, I got to tour Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. The confused excitement of a possible whale sighting aside (the Robben Island tour begins and ends with a boat ride) it was an experience that was both sobering and inspirational.

Listening to the tour guide on Robben Island, the magnitude of the sacrifice these then young men made struck me. When they were imprisoned there, in rooms smaller than the guard dogs’ kennels, being systematically stripped of dignity and humanity, they had no way of knowing how the story would end. They didn’t even know if they’d live to be free again, much less to be lauded as heroes, on the winning side of history.

And then the former prisoners chose to turn Robben Island into a museum, and give the tours themselves. I couldn’t help but wonder: what does it take to open up some of the most painful parts of one’s life to gawking tourists every day? And yet, they felt it must be done, so that subsequent generations do not repeat the mistakes of the past.

It might sound like a trivial comparison, but in some ways it reminded me of the issues we explored in a open government hackathon and in a open budget project while I was in Cape Town. There’s growing public demand, worldwide, for government transparency, and open data has a big role to play in that.

The nuts and bolts of opening up government data, however, can involve sacrifices for individual civil servants — those who are responsible for that data. How will I find the time to digitise government records, alongside all my other duties? Will I lose my job if I make a mistake while following ambiguous government guidelines on opening up datasets? Or if public outcry against something revealed by the data demands that heads roll? Or if, since the data is open, they no longer need my expertise? What happens to my reputation if the public concludes, rightly or wrongly, that I’ve been part of a cover-up that has only now been able to come to light?

Or, simply, civil servants may fear the repercussions of transparency revealing to the public the simple gaps in the data that they already know exist. Whether imagined or all too real, these fears are just a few examples of the human considerations and concerns we must grapple with when we ask public bodies to be more transparent — even if we believe the public has a right to know, and notwithstanding the fact that the opening up of the information can be the first step in improving that data, and gaining support from concerned citizens who want to contribute to solving common problems.

As a citizen open data sounds great, but as an employee with a very specific skill set, precarious responsibilities and a family to feed, it can sometimes be intimidating. As an organisation, opening up your inner workings, even for a greater cause, is not an easy thing to do. But as those Robben Island prisoners show, if we work through these difficult decisions, maybe our society can be more open, more progressive for it.

The motivation for my last post was simple: the need to consider real human beings when we design and develop digital products. While people-centric design is really not a thing yet for us in Jamaica, there are efforts underway to make it happen.

NCB are among those trying to buck the status quo, with the set-up of their Agile Labs to develop digital products for the company. They partnered with UWI to create the Digital Talent Lab, a 4-month internship programme for 15 mostly final year Computing students currently underway. The challenge for NCB of course is that they need professionals with the right skills — and mindset. So, can the interns deliver?

With digital design and development, it’s essential to consider all user needs before we begin. Firstly, we need to identify the problem that we’re here to fix, which means that we have to properly document the requirements. Secondly, if we don’t do the first thing properly, the product itself will be a problem when it launches: people won’t use it.

My work with the interns was to get them to understand how to approach this vital first stage, to build a framework to document the requirements. What they struggled with the most was ambiguity, but unfortunately, the briefing you get as a designer or developer in the professional world can be extremely vague, so I deliberately didn’t spell everything out to them.

The responsibility is ours as designers and developers to take hold of the process, and to work through the ambiguity by ensuring that we have a solid process for determining requirements. Young professionals have to get used to the fact that they must take initiative and ask questions. For some this might go against their educational experience, but they really have to brave this discomfort.

So, if I’m designing an app that people are going to use, I need to find out who actually is intended to use this app e.g. do parents use this app with their children; or is it an app that children themselves would use on their own? Questions and answers like this will ultimately shape the design and success of the final product.

My thoughts continue to evolve on this, but based on what I’ve learned in my own professional journey, here’re the top five considerations for the design-centred requirements gathering process I shared with the interns:

1. Purpose: always be clear about the purpose of the product, including why the client who pays you asked you to do it!

2. Empathy: you are not your user. Doesn’t matter if you are a similar age or demographic — the very fact that you are involved in the design project means you can’t rely on your assumptions because you know too much about the subject. The people you’re designing for will often have surprisingly different world views, needs and ethical considerations.

3. Communication: incredibly important in the process because you have to properly explain ‘why’ to your colleagues and clients, so that they can see that your approach to determining requirements and making design decisions is valid.

4. Future: the aim is not to get a complete or perfect design in one go. Prototype, test, tweak, repeat, but there has to be a stopping point — just as long as the criteria for doing so is defined, and there is a clear direction for what comes after, and when.

5. Measurement: ensure you understand what success will look like throughout prototyping, and after, when the product is being used in the real world. Consider what about the product you will measure (e.g. popularity), and how (e.g. number of shared download links). Demonstrating the value in what you will do — and at some point, what you did — will keep you accountable, but it will also help you address the unanticipated weaknesses in your product.

There’s a slow realisation among Jamaican organisations that website/app/insert-technology-of-choice-here “users” are living, breathing human beings. And as our society gets more digital, more is at stake when we don’t make room for humanity in our projects.

This challenge is not unique to Jamaica. I got a chance to externalise this recently when I ran a workshop on user experience for our fellow non-profit OpenUp in Cape Town, South Africa. It was an incredible learning experience, part of a work trip that included time in Tanzania and Uganda for another project. OpenUp had just started a massive three-year project: creating an open budget data portal for South Africa’s National Treasury, their equivalent of Jamaica’s finance ministry.

Each member of the OpenUp team was genuinely passionate about their particular speciality — be it programming, data or storytelling — and more importantly, they were just as invested in what each of those specialities could achieve together, despite differing perspectives and priorities. It was also impressive to see the level of buy-in they had from their government client. South Africa is regularly rated among the top 3 countries in the world for budget transparency; their National Treasury has even experimented with things like open procurement.

I’m yet to see a similar level of support in any public entity here — though current initiatives, such as the eTendering system, suggest the Jamaica Government is moving in right direction.

That commitment to openness in data is something that can be mirrored in design: caring enough about people to prioritise access and usability. Lack of consideration for human needs shows in the products we launch, when often, despite the introductory fanfare, the public reception is “meh”.

There are a number of reasons our products lack this consideration.

Sometimes organisations think it’s enough to just ask people what they want, and take their responses too literally. Some organisations might only consider the actual needs of a very narrow set of humans, such as those in the C-suite, and make assumptions about the needs of others…such as the customers! Some organisations don’t realise their software engineers are for problem-solving, not just building on spec. Too many teams are building products based on untested assumptions, with challenging deadlines and insufficient resources.

Most importantly, I think we forget that creating digital projects is not like constructing a road. Whereas the latter is a fairly linear process with most of the planning done upfront, understanding user needs is a continuous process, requiring user feedback, testing, tweaking, and sometimes revamping, event after a product has been launched.

User research is so vital, and so telling in its absence. Consider the following questions: Who are your users? Are you solving the problem most important to them? How are they influencing the direction of your work? When was the last time you checked if you were still on the same page as your users? These are just some of the questions that teams committed to addressing real user needs should be constantly asking themselves.

At SlashRoots, throughout our process, we make sure there’s a clear link between the client’s goals, the needs of the end user, and products and services under development.

Think about it like this: a good tailor doesn’t just rely on the patterns for your suit, and knowing how to sew. They take your measurements at each stage of the suit’s creation. With each new layer or part, they measure again, using the opportunity to make adjustments and get your feedback. The tailor understands that as the suit comes together, your understanding about how you want the suit to fit will evolve — sometimes for reasons we don’t want to admit!

That’s good user research in action, a strong focus on user needs to ensure you’re doing the right things to achieve a desired effect.

Compared to the suits of a careful tailor, too many digital products being created today feel like those suits borrowed from a slightly smaller friend: they don’t quite fit and you have to bend over backwards to make it work. In the worst cases they come apart at the seams, just when you need it most.

The next time you’re creating a product or service, make sure you’re taking the time to understand what your users need. Build a great suit!

What does the humble Jamaican cook shop and the pursuit of being Jamaica’s own Mark Zuckerberg have in common? Actually, quite a lot, thanks to provisions under the Data Protection Act, which SlashRoots and the Make.Better Software Developers Community worry could have an outsized impact on Jamaican business and innovation.

We strongly believe in every Jamaican’s right to privacy and commend the Government for trying to ensure that legislature to guide what this right should look like, keeps pace with today’s technology. The hard part is finding a middle ground that does not stifle innovation or place unreasonable regulation on individuals and businesses across Jamaica (or “data controllers” as they are called in the bill). What do I mean?

With the digital tools available today, it has never been easier to setup a Facebook page, launch a website, or create an app to test a business idea with prospective customers. But under the proposed Data Protection Bill, if you want to collect their information, you would first need to register as a data controller; appoint a “data protection officer”; pay a fee; and within 11 months, submit an audit of your activities.

Sounds daunting? Well, even if you aren’t in tech, you could also be impacted. In making our submission to Parliament yesterday, March 13th 2018, we spoke about how everyday people and businesses, like the Jamaican cookshop, will be impacted.

Our friendly meal provider — who we imagine provides an invaluable community service serving great fried chicken with curry gravy — must now also get his head around the fact that he’s a data controller since he does in fact handle customer data in the eyes of the proposed law. This could be names, mobile numbers, delivery addresses, or balances for customers who “trus a food”.

Video of SlashRoots’ submission to Parliament.

Curryman and other small to medium-sized business owners may find these new requirements challenging and we worry that burden of compliance may not match the risks for data misuse or their capacities.

In the coming months the public will become more and more aware of the Act. FYI: the next meeting of the Joint Select Committee will be at 10am on Tuesday, March 27. The Data Protection Act is probably the most far reaching legislation to be discussed in recent time, even more so than the controversial NIDS Bill. It is vital that the act provide an enabling, rather than a restrictive framework, for data use.

We believe the members of the Committee want a healthy debate on the bill and broad engagement with the public.

We invite you to click here and read our submission to Parliament. If you run a cook shop or any business at least, for your own benefit, please at least read our following key recommendations:

• A Tiered Data Controller System — A tiered system be established that exempts or reduces the obligations of organizations as “data controllers” based upon their size, risks of data misuse, or age.

• Broaden The Definition Of Consent — The definition of consent be broadened to include “informed consent”. And that definition should require it to be specific, informed, unambiguous and active.

• Annual Report On Exemptions — The Data Commissioner should publish an annual report on the number of data protection exception requests and restrictions that have been granted.

• Independent Oversight For Exemptions — An Independent Oversight Mechanism for Tax and National Security exemptions under the bill. This oversight mechanism should include representation of civil society. The requests should be reviewed at regular intervals.

• A Digital Audit Trail for all records — Even in cases where a data subject’s record or a digital service receives an exemption, all accesses to data record must still be recorded and auditable. This may be redacted from citizen disclosure in some cases, but it should still be tracked. A process should be setup for citizens should be able to request declassification of redacted access to their data.

• Data Protection Review Cycle — Technology advances quickly. For this law to remain relevant, the Data Commissioner’s Office must be required to review the published regulations every 2–3 years, in collaboration with the CIO’s office, eGov.

This blog post was co-authored with Denique Ferguson and Alesha Aris of the SlashRoots Foundation. It was originally published on the Open Knowledge International’s Blog in support of the 2016 Global Open Data Index Launch.

Over the last two years, the SlashRoots Foundation has supported the Caribbean’s participation in the Open Knowledge International’s Global Open Data Index (GODI), an annual survey which measures the state of “open” government across the world. We recently completed the 2016 survey submissions and were asked to share our initial reactions before the full GODI study is released in May.

In the Global Open Data Index, each country is assessed based on the availability of “open data” as defined in the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Open Data Definition across key thematic areas that Governments are expected to publish information on. These include: National Maps, National Laws, Government Budget, Government Spending, National Statistics, Administrative Boundaries, Procurement, Pollutant Emissions, Election Results, Weather Forecast, Water Quality, Locations, Draft Legislation, Company Register, and Land Ownership.

For the 2016 survey, the Caribbean was represented by ten countries — Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, St. Kitts & Nevis, and St. Vincent & the Grenadines. As the Caribbean’s Regional Coordinator, we manage and source survey submissions from citizens, open data enthusiasts, and government representatives. These submissions then undergo a quality review process led by global experts. This exercise resulted in 150 surveys for the region and provided both an excellent snapshot of how open data in the Caribbean is progressing and comparative positioning of how the region ranks in a global context.

Unfortunately, progress in the Caribbean has been mixed, if not slow. While Caribbean governments were early adopters of Freedom of Information legislation — 7 countries (Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago) having passed FOI law — the digital channels through which many citizens are increasingly accessing government information remain underdeveloped. Furthermore, the publication of raw and baseline data, beyond references in press releases, remains a challenge across the region.

For example, St. Kitts, which passed FOI legislature in 2006, only had 2 “open” data sets, Government Budget and Legislature, published readily online. Comparatively, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica governments have invested in open data infrastructure and websites to improve the channels through which citizens access information. Impressively, the Dominican Republic’s data portal consisted of 373 data sets from 71 participating Ministries, Departments and Agencies. However, updates to these data portals and government websites remain a challenge. In the case of Jamaica’s open data portal, which launched in 2016, it has received a handful of updates since its first publication. While St Lucia and Trinidad & Tobago have published no updates since the first month of their respective portal’s publication.

Despite these shortcomings, Caribbean governments and civil society organisations continue to make important contributions to the global open data discourse that demonstrate tangible benefits of open data adoption in the lives of Caribbean citizens. These range from research demonstrating the economic impact of open government data to community-led initiatives helping to bridge the data gaps that constrain local government planning. In December 2016, Jamaica became the fourth country in the region, after Guyana, the Dominican Republic and Trinidad & Tobago, to indicate its interest in joining the Open Government Partnership, a multilateral initiative consisting of 73 member countries that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

Find out more about how the Caribbean ranks in the Open Knowledge International’s full GODI report published on May 2nd, 2017.

This blog post forms part two of a three-part series in which we will be sharing the key insights and lessons learned from our work thus far re-imagining Jamaica’s agriculture infrastructure. In part one, I provided an overview of the ADS project and its underlying theory of change for addressing some of the critical challenges that prevent the development of Jamaica’s agricultural sector. In the last post, I’ll be sharing what is next for the ADS initiative and some of the key questions that the work has raised.

In Jamaica, the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA), an agency within the Ministry of Agriculture, is responsible for farmer registration and the provision of extension services to the agricultural community. As the custodian of the farmer registry, RADA regularly receives information requests from a wide variety of stakeholders. These range from policy makers developing reports and briefs, banks evaluating loan credibility of farmers, and, most frequently, individuals or organizations seeking farmers who produce particular crops or other criteria. The farmer registry also plays a key role in Government’s social protection and benefit programmes targeting farmers.

Understanding existing data interfaces

However, the channels, procedures, and rules through which this information can be accessed are not always clear or well-defined. And servicing these requests can be time-consuming for RADA staff. To better understand these challenges we conducted a 6 week problem discovery exploration surveying farmers and extension officers; RADA and Ministry of Agriculture staff; and other public and private sector data consumers. We also undertook an independent service trial of the data-requesting channels identified by participants to gain a first-hand understanding of the user-experience of accessing agricultural data.

We uncovered some interesting insights on the challenges that both data consumers and data custodians faced. A subset of these are included below:

• Data gaps have thus far been unavoidable. With an estimated 130 extension staff serving more than 180,000 registered farmers, maintaining updated data records on agricultural activity has been a costly and difficult task for RADA. While these challenges reflect the realities of operational constraints, the data gaps have also undermined the confidence of data consumers in the information RADA provides.

• Responses to data requests vary significantly across channels and within channels over time. There is a lack of clarity around what data can be shared, who should have access to this information and what were the appropriate channels through which to access it. While data consumers understood RADA’s mandate as both a provider of technical expertise and statistical data on the agricultural sector, the experience of accessing and using data from RADA was eroding confidence in the organization’s ability to fulfill this mandate. In our research, we found that even responses to the same information requests to a specific extension officer varied over time.

• The use of formal and informal channels to access agricultural information was common among consumers with the latter most effective for meeting information needs. However, this favoured entities with existing personal relationships and often led to frustration for new agricultural sector entrants, particularly new businesses and young innovators.

• Data consumers identified common factors for evaluating the trustworthiness of a data source. These included: the currency of the data, the frequency of updates, accessibility (meta-data, presentation, exportability), data coverage and perceived domain expertise of the source. However, the existing data interfaces often did not provide sufficient context to support this evaluation when information was shared.

• Friction exists between RADA’s policy and constitutional requirement to protect farmers’ personal information and the operational realities of supporting the development of the agricultural sector, with farmers as key beneficiaries. At the operational level, access to personal information was often key to facilitating market linkages, channeling agricultural support to those most in need, and the activities of partner agency activities such as anti-praedial larceny efforts. However, no overarching Government of Jamaica or Ministry of Agriculture policy exists to inform key actors on how to perform their duties in serving the organization’s mission.

In responding to these and other insights identified, it became clear that there was a need to rethink how the farmer registry was managed and the design of the interfaces (systems and people) through which it was accessed. A key outcome of these discussions was the decision to develop the HarvestAPI platform.

Extending Traditional Data Infrastructure. Designing New Interfaces

HarvestAPI is an open source farmer registry platform that facilitates the sharing of agricultural data across government agencies and with the public. In its initial release, it acts as an extension to the existing Agricultural Business Information System, which houses the farmer registry and production data, to significantly improve the accessibility of information RADA collects.

In designing the HarvestAPI platform a key set of principles were synthesized from the user research to guide the team’s design decisions. These included:

• Open Data should be infrastructural — Typically, open data and data sharing initiatives are seen as separate activities from core data collection systems. This often leads to duplicate or extra work for already stretched public servants and invariably gets deprioritized. As a result, we worked with RADA to ensure the data publication value chain and data collection value chain were directly linked.

• Data context is important — Data consumers wanted context on the information that was being shared to inform how it should be interpreted. For example, it is currently not unusual for a response to an information request (e.g farmers who produce carrot) to be shared without details on when the support data records were last updated.

• Monitoring and controlling access to the farmer registry is key to protecting farmer data rights — This control is the basis of progressive data privacy policies and consent mechanisms which enable RADA to track how and who accesses the farmer registry information and lays the groundwork for empowering farmers to understand how their information is being used.

• Data access channels should be transparent, and, where possible, frictionless — Guidelines about what information is available and how it can be accessed should be transparent and easy to understand. Digital tools and platforms can also assist in making responding easier for both data providers and consumers.

Looking ahead

RADA is currently piloting the HarvestAPI platform in a private Beta with data consumers. In parallel, the SlashRoots team is working with the Praedial Larceny Prevention Unit to apply these design principles and other lessons from the research to revise the data interface used by police officers during their anti-praedial field operations. The research and the adoption of the HarvestAPI platform have also raised important questions that will need to be tackled.

• While registers are expected to be authoritative, canonical references on specific topics, how do these characteristics translate to an environment where resource and operational realities make them impossible for any single entity to fulfill? Can distributed or shared data infrastructure aid in spreading the burden of data collection and maintenance across multiple actors to increase scale? How does the role of the registry custodian change in this scenario?

• How do you operationalize data rights in resource-constrained and low literacy environments? What role can “trusted?” intermediaries play in bridging the gap?

Matthew McNaughton is a Founding Principal of the SlashRoots Foundation. In this role he leads projects that focus on the practical applications of ICTs in development.

In 2016, the newly elected Jamaican Government set out an ambitious target of achieving 5% GDP growth in four years. To much public surprise, in the third quarter of that year, Jamaica recorded an impressive 2.2% GDP growth rate, the strongest real GDP growth estimate in nine years. The Agriculture sector contributed significantly to this achievement with the sector individually experiencing an estimated real GDP growth of 28% over the previous quarter.

It is important to note, however, that this unusually high growth in the industry has been attributed primarily to improved rainfall after multiple years of extended drought. As a result, while this tangible growth in agricultural production has been undeniably beneficial, real and sustainable expansion of the sector continues to require a departure from the status quo of industry operations.

Agriculture continues its legacy as a critical sector of the Jamaican economy, employing almost 19% of the population and accounting for 9% of GDP. But accelerating the development of the sector is complicated by the predominantly rural and resource-constrained environment in which it operates, which makes it costly to effectively reach and serve the agricultural communities across the island. One impact of this constraint is the difficulty of maintaining up to date records on agricultural activities that are necessary for effectively targeting support and information at those that need it most.

SlashRoots extended its ongoing collaboration with the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA), the Government arm responsible for providing extension services and managing farmer registration, to assist in addressing this problem through the Agriculture Digital Services (ADS) research project. The ADS project sought to explore how “openness” could be applied to assist in overcoming structural challenges that constrain efforts to close agricultural data gaps and improve decision-making. In reflecting on this challenge and emergent work on the importance of data infrastructure and digital services, the SlashRoots team developed a theory of change positing that data collaborations, built on shared open infrastructure, can improve accessibility of data and distribute the burden of data collection across multiple actors leading to increased information usage and the creation of higher quality data assets and information services.

At the start of 2016, we sat down with RADA to discuss some foundational questions:

• What were the information needs that RADA was responsible for a meeting?

• Who were the users that consumed, managed and contributed data and supported the systems necessary to meet these information needs?

• What were the organization’s channels through which information needs were met and what were the challenges encountered meeting these needs?

This workshop kicked off a series of stakeholder discussions with farmers, data collectors, data managers (and custodians) and data consumers across the public and private sectors aimed at understanding how to design better interfaces for accessing agricultural information. To complement these user interviews, the research team undertook independent service trials of the data-requesting channels identified by participants to gain a first-hand understanding of the user-experience when trying to access agricultural data. Furthermore, the team mapped out the broader policy environment which informed data publishing practices and citizen’s privacy rights in the Jamaican context and reviewed comparative approaches in Argentina, the United Kingdom, and Europe.

Applying these research insights, the ADS project team accomplished several key early successes. These include:

• The redevelopment of HarvestAPI, an open source platform that facilitates the sharing of agricultural data across government agencies and with the public. Able to integrate with core government systems, RADA is using HarvestAPI to provide access to the farmer registry and production data to significantly improve the accessibility of data it collects. A private Beta with data consumers is currently underway;

• A redesigned interface for the Praedial Larceny Prevention Unit (PLPU), using the data principles synthesized from the user interviews, through which they could access RADA’s information. The PLPU is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Security and Agriculture to combat the prevalence of praedial larceny in Jamaica. The resulting AgroCheck mobile application helps police officers trace the provenance of agricultural produce to establish whether they have been legally obtained, and are being legally transported.

• Finally, in recognition of the findings of the problem discovery phase, RADA has committed to adopting the organization’s first data privacy policy. The project team is currently supporting them in developing a draft policy.

While much of the work is still underway, we are excited by the insights and user response to the findings of the project thus far. This blog post forms part one of a three-part series in which we will be sharing the key insights and lessons learned from our work thus far re-imagining Jamaica’s agriculture infrastructure. In the next blog, I’ll focus on the key findings from our stakeholder discussions that informed the redesign of HarvestAPI and prompted the need for a data policy.