CTU PRESS RELEASE
Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago (1st March 2021) – The CTU welcomes Mr. Rodney Taylor as its Secretary General from 1st March 2021, after a public, Caribbean-wide recruitment process.
A national of Barbados, Mr. Taylor joins the CTU from the Barbados Ministry of Innovation, Science and Smart Technology (MIST), where he was its Chief Digital Technology Officer. In that position, he was the technical lead on Barbados’ digital transformation, improving public sector service delivery through the strategic use of innovation, science and SMART technology.
He also has acted as the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary and formerly managed the Information Systems Unit in Barbados’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade and its overseas missions. While working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs he briefly headed the CARICOM and Caribbean Relations Desk where he represented Barbados at regional policy meetings of CARICOM and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS).
No stranger to the CTU, Mr. Taylor was earlier seconded to the organisation between June 2010 and August 2014 to work as its Business Development and Operations Manager. In this role, he worked with regional governments in the development of policies to govern information and communications technology (ICT); led the work to operationalise the CTU’s Caribbean Centre of Excellence, to offer consultancy services to the Member States, and represented the region in many international ICT conferences.
Sharing his vision for the CTU, Mr. Taylor indicated, “the CTU has to continue to be a leader in driving the transformation of national economies in the new digital context. This has to happen country by country, but it also has to happen within a regional framework such as the CARICOM Single ICT Space, an initiative for which CTU is the lead agency. This calls for a very focused and streamlined organization to promote harmonized policies and standards that will allow us to make the region more attractive for investment in the technology sector, and ultimately, to make life better for our people”.
Mr. Taylor is an advisor on Internet Governance and has published research on e-Commerce diffusion in small island developing states in the Journal of Information Systems for Developing Countries. He is a technologist at heart and a founding member and former Chairman of the Barbados Chapter of the Internet Society, an organisation whose aim is to promote the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world.
Mr. Taylor holds a Masters in Management and Information Systems from the University of Manchester, UK, and a Post Graduate Diploma in Public Sector Management from the University of the West Indies.
Mr. Taylor is an ardent SCUBA diver and takes every opportunity to explore the beautiful marine life in the Caribbean waters. He is married and has two sons and is the first Barbadian national substantively appointed to head the CTU in its thirty-two year history.
