A new draft policy on data and cloud computing has been published by the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, proposing that the government’s data be moved online.
According to a report on BusinessTech, this is intended to improve the state’s ability to deliver services, ensure South Africa’s data security and sovereignty, and provide data analytics that can inform policy-making.
Under this draft policy, the existing state-owned companies which focus on data, such as Sentech and Broadband Infraco, will be merged into one, and a new state infrastructure company will also be established.
This new infrastructure company will be named the State Digital Infrastructure Company (SDIC), and it will be given access to the extra capacity in state-owned ICT infrastructure through existing state-owned entities such as Sanral, Prasa, the South African National Research Network, Transnet, and Eskom.
Government also intends to build a new High-Performance Computing and Data Processing Centre (HPCDPC), according to the draft policy. It will have data facilities, cloud-computing capacity, and processing capabilities.
The purpose of this centre is to provide on-demand cloud services to organizations such as municipalities, universities, national government departments, provinces, businesses, metros, and civil society organizations.
Other proposals included in the draft policy are:
- Data centres may make provision for self-generation energy capabilities to ensure uninterrupted and sustainable operations while reducing total dependence on the strained national electricity grid; and
- To support SMMEs in the digital economy, strategies and interventions (such as digital hubs and digital transformation centres, supported by open compute and open software) will be adopted to enable locally developed applications through collaboration between relevant government departments, agencies, academia and SMMEs.
[Image: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay]