Author Bios

Maurice L McNaughton
Maurice McNaughton is the Director of the Centre of Excellence for IT Innovation at Mona School of Business & Management, UWI.

Dr. McNaughton is Director of the Centre of Excellence for IT-enabled Innovation at the Mona School of Business & Management and is currently doing active research in the areas of Open Source Software, Open/Big Data and Mobile Computing. He is a founding member of the Caribbean Open Institute, a regional coalition of Caribbean organizations that engages and works with regional governments, researchers, journalists, technologists, NGOs, and academics, to raise awareness, strengthen capacity, and foster collaborations towards the adoption of open development approaches.

Aritcles by this author:

Blogs by this author:

  • Of the five priority Action Areas emerging from the deliberations at the successful IODC 2015 in Ottawa, Canada (i.e., The Charter, Standards, Capacity Building, Measurement, Innovation), the latter—Innovation, otherwise described as the “Problem-Solving” Action Track — is perhaps, the most eclectic and least structured of the areas.

  • No matter what source you subscribe to, the numbers are staggering, when one considers the potential economic value of open data. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates approximately US$3 trillion value potential across 7 domains. The Warsar Institute for Economic Studies projects a contribution of €205 billion annually to the European Union. An Omidyar Network study suggests open data impact for the G20 countries could be US$2.6 trillion per annum or 1.1% of GDP. What does this mean for small developing countries like Jamaica?..

  • The expression "Innovation at the periphery", has become more popular in the last few years and perhaps even over-used in several contexts. It describes technological innovations in seemingly remote geographical regions. It promotes the "skunkworks" innovation that takes place within an enterprise, but outside of mainstream R&D centres. It highlights indigenous frugal innovations that emerge out of developing country contexts, whose global adoption reverse the accepted convention of North-South technology transfer.

  • Anyone who considers themself a Trekkie (A cult fan of the Star Trek Series franchise) would immediately recognize the turn of phrase that titles this piece as being drawn from the opening monologue of every Star Trek television show or movie..  "Space... The final frontier... These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission.. etc.

    In somewhat similar manner as the intrepid crew of the Starship Enterprise explored the vast unknown reaches of Space, so too is the MSB Center of Excellence (COE) embarked on a journey to explore the relatively unexplored application of Free and Open Source Software in the local business community.. To boldly go where none has gone before?

  • So we're heading off to Uruguay in a few weeks to present our ideas about the use of ICT (mobile in particular) as an enabler of the local Microfinance process, and hopefully to secure funding to pursue these ideas. Studies have shown that the development and operating performance of the microfinance sector in Jamaica and the English-Speaking-Caribbean lags considerably behind their counterparts in many other developing countries...

  • MSB through a collaboration between its Centre of Excellence and an interesting mix of partners (more on that in a subsequent Blog), has gained the distinction of being one of 20 best winning ideas selected for the "Technologies for Financial Inclusion Program ". This was in response to a Multi-Agency Call for Project Ideas that would improve the low-income population’s access to financial services by applying innovative technological solutions in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The Call attracted 420 Idea submissions from 30 Countries...

  • The application of Computing in Business (some folks call it MIS) is continually evolving as a discipline. As an Industry, we've now learned after many years of failed IT Projects (17% success rate according to the Standish Report), that critical success factors are more about Organizational Context, Culture and People rather than the technology itself. Perhaps we could refer to these collectively as the "Politics" of the Organization... The Open Source phenomenon has rattled the very foundations of the commercial software industry.. And while Open-Source has spawned some fascinating technologies, it Is fundamentally more about the Philosophy of Collaboration and Community than about technology itself...