In our May 2024 Community Chat, and with members of the Caribbean tech community, Allison James, a Certified Information Systems Auditor and Certified Information Privacy Professional at KPMG based in Barbados, and Rojane Rose, a Product Owner at MC Systems in Jamaica, the panel discusses: data and digital illiteracy in a world of data privacy and cybersecurity; the digital challenge of national data collection; and technology, the future of finance and empowering young people for the digital economy.
This episode is also available on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music!!
Welcome to our May 2024 Community Chat!
We have a wonderful mishmash of topics this month. Some of the common themes are regarding the importance of data, digital literacy and data literacy – though the context in which they might be evident differ. Further, we may also need to question whether our societies have done (or are doing) enough to ensure that citizens develop the knowledge to make optimal decisions in an increasingly digital world.
More details on the topics discussed follow a brief introduction of our guests.
Introducing our guests
With over 13 years of experience in the IT industry, Allison James is a Certified Information Systems Auditor, a Certified Information Privacy Professional and a Fellow Chartered and Certified Accountant. She is also the Data Privacy Lead at KPMG CARICOM. Among other things, she helps clients identify and mitigate risks, enhance controls, and optimise performance.
As an IT risk management professional, Allison’s focus is on the digital trust agenda: specifically, the mature adoption of cybersecurity and data privacy within the region. She is passionate about leveraging technology and data to drive innovation and transformation, as well as continued learning and sharing her knowledge and expertise with others.
Rojane Rose is a young professional with a proven track record in product management and innovation. Possessing a sharp acumen for strategic leadership, Rojane specialises in supervisory management, research, and product development. In his role as Product Owner at Management Control Systems, he adeptly leads software development teams, ensuring seamless alignment with business objectives and robust stakeholder engagement. His skill set extends to product portfolio management, customer experience design, and driving innovation across various organisational domains.
Prior to assuming his current position, Rojane excelled as an Innovation Analyst, where he played a pivotal role in forging strategic partnerships and fostering collaborative growth within the industry. He is recognised for his proficiency in conducting thorough research, formulating innovative product strategies, and guiding cross-functional teams through the human-centred design thinking process.
The topics discussed
First, in our still-evolving data-rich environment, we are still becoming aware of how valuable data is to help develop strategies, make informed decisions and even generate revenue. However, all those opportunities need to be considered through the lens of data privacy and cybersecurity, which are also becoming increasingly important. At the same time, and in the Caribbean region, our citizens are not as digitally savvy can they ought to be, which could result in them being exposed to and experiencing a broad range of harms that may be next to impossible to remedy. Hence as our first topic, we discuss Data and digital illiteracy in a world of data privacy and cybersecurity.
The impetus for our second topic was an article in the Jamaica Observer on the delays in completing the 2021 national census. Although the census enumerators have been given tablet computers to administer the survey, which would speed up the collation and analysis of the results, it appears that the more experienced enumerators were challenged in using the tablets provided, which was among the reasons for the delay. As a result, a crucial data source for the country is not available, which we discussed as The digital challenge of national data collection.
Finally, with his experience in the banking and financial services sector, Rojane has been able to observe and analyse young people’s beliefs, values and behaviour, especially when it comes to money. We are also living at a time when there is an emphasis on countries developing their digital economies, but are younger persons levering technology to build their financial future? We thus explored this subject under the rubric, Technology, the future of finance and empowering young people for the digital economy.
We would love to hear your thoughts!
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Let’s make it happen!
Select links
Below are links to some of the organisations and resources that either were mentioned during the episode, or otherwise, might be useful:
- Allison James
- Rojane Rose
- KPMG in Caricom
- KPMG in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean
- Management Control Systems Limited (MC Systems)
- Washington Post, How a fish tank helped hack a casino
- BBC, ‘It’s a hacker’s paradise out there’
- Jamaica Observer article, Census digital challenge
- Barbados Association of Retired Persons (BARP) Inc.
Images credit: A James; R Rose; Freepik; Nattanan Kanchanaprat (Pixabay); Lukas Blazek (Unsplash)
Music credit: The Last Word (Oui Ma Chérie), by Andy Narrell
Podcast editing Support: Mayra Bonilla Lopez
