This “Agriculture Digital Service” strategic initiative has sought to explore how “openness” could be applied to assist in overcoming structural constraints that inhibit the scale necessary to more effectively service Jamaica’s agricultural community.In pursuit of this objective the strategic initiatives is applying emergent best practice in government digital services field--as championed by leading organizations like the United Kingdom’s Government Digital Service and City of Buenos Aires’s CTO office--and an evolving theory of change for how data collaborations facilitated by shared open infrastructure can enable access to and the creation of high quality agricultural data assets and information services. The outcomes were that the initiative would aid in the closing of existing data gaps, improve the information available to actors throughout the agricultural sector and explore the implications of an increasing digital and connected public service on data privacy and ownership rights of farmers.

The goals of strategic initiative are defined by three pillars:
● The development of a technology platform that respects RADA’s responsibility as custodian of the farmer registry while better aligning with the information needs of data consumers across the MInistry of Agriculture and external to the Government of Jamaica.
● The design of consent models that facilitate active participation of farming communities in decisions about how data about them is being used.
● Influencing the ongoing policy discussion on open data and data privacy within the Government of Jamaica through lessons learned and pilot demonstrations

With the funding support of the International Development Research Centre of Canada under the OD4D program, SlashRoots undertook this Agriculture Strategic initiative with the Rural Agricultural Development Authority. This report provides a summary of the body of work that was undertaken by the SlashRoots team between January 2016 - November 2016. This document provides an overview of the process, findings and lessons learned from SlashRoots’ engagement over the project period.