— strict penalties to be imposed for people who misuse information
— Jagdeo says

WHILE significant strides are being made to enhance security, promote efficiency and improve comfort through digitisation, the government is concurrently working to establish policies that will prevent the misuse of information.
This is according the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) General Secretary, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, who at a news conference last week outlined massive plans to streamline the immigration process, enhance local security, digitise health records and implement block-chain technology at several public agencies.

“We have to strengthen the privacy laws too, because we don’t want this to be abused by law enforcement where people go and visit somebody and then suddenly there they get tracked,” Dr. Jagdeo said, adding:
“We don’t want to police society so; you can go to jail for giving out that sort of information.”

The government, Dr Jagdeo explained, is in the first phase of rolling out its ‘Safe Guyana’ project, which will see 24-hour monitoring through smart cameras. These are intended to provide the authorities with the relevant intelligence needed to track criminal activities.
It is expected that these cameras will have running predictive software to anticipate high-crime areas, so that security personnel can be deployed where necessary.

A digital database will also be established at the Ministry of Home Affairs, linking information such as births, deaths, marriage records and criminal data on the databases where authorities have fingerprints.
Dr. Jagdeo also noted that the government was also working to establish its electronic patient record system.

“Once you have your record in this system, even in the public hospital, you would be able to take that to a private hospital should you go there. The doctors from the private hospital, if you do an X-ray, your entire history will be here.”
While this is being done, the government’s aim is to ensure that strict penalties will be in place to ensure the protection of citizens’ confidential records.

“There would be severe penalties, too, for sharing people’s records. Severe penalties for doing that because you don’t want people’s medical history to be in the public domain or released; and so that also would help us to better administer health care.
“It requires a lot of policy time and a lot of decisions had to be made and a lot of work is taking place to modernise our society to mirror the physical changes that we are seeing in Guyana. These are the infrastructure changes in a modern world,” he added.
Meanwhile, the government will implement blockchain technology in some of its agencies, as part of efforts to enhance cyber security.

Blockchain technology is well known for its capacity to guard against unauthorised changes or tampering and to preserve data integrity. It makes it more difficult for someone to manipulate or fabricate data.

“We’ve also committed ourselves to put to use blockchain technology in two areas,  particularly the land records in this country and also in GGMC [Guyana Geology and Mines Commission], because we have had complaints about people in those places. Leases or prospecting. Licences are given out on a first-come-first-served basis,” Dr Jagdeo said.