Sindh has achieved a great milestone as cabinet on Thursday gave approval of first ever cloud policy in the province.
This was stated by Mrs. Tanzila ume Habibah Special Assistant to CM Sindh for Information science and Technology. The cabinet meeting was presided over by CM Sindh Syed Murad Ali Shah.
The IT department told the cabinet that the absence of cloud policy has compelled public sector organizations to work in silo and caused inefficient use of resources utilization, security issues, increased capital costs and infrastructure degradation issues.
The salient features of the Cloud First Approach include economic scale, collaboration among federation and provinces, standardization, and adoption of emerging tools and technologies. The provincial government, under the new policy, would appoint a Cloud Acquisition Office (CAO) would be established to support the public sector entity in their transition to cloud.
The Cloud policy is a paradigm shift from Capital Expenditure to Operational Expenditure resulting in cost savings with better infrastructure. The Provincial Cloud Acquisition Office would work with other departments and SPPRA to bring the required changes (PAYG “Pay as you go” or “pay as use”) with reference to the policy.
Provincial Cloud Acquisition Office must be involved in procurement decisions of ICT related infrastructure. The cabinet approved the policy. Digital Technology Board: The provincial cabinet also approved establishment of Sindh Digital Technology Board for promotion, planning, execution, supervision, evaluation and regulations of Digital technologies to boost the `digital economy by enabling e-government, promoting innovation, capacity building, supporting IT Sector and collaborating with stakeholders at province, federal and international level. The chairman of the board would be Minister IT, Secretary IT would be its vice chairman and secretary Finance, Secretary P&D and MD of the board would be its members. The functions of the board, include digital Technology policy guidelines to the government; recommend Information, prepare a comprehensive program for the Information for the approval of the government, Digital Technology sector; plan, manage, implement and control the digital Technology sector programs and schemes and submits reports to the government to observe growth and enrichment of the approved Information, digital Technology program.