Policy Supporting Gov’t’s Private Cloud Platform to Be Established

A Cloud Policy that supports the Government of Jamaica’s Private Cloud Platform (GovCloud) is to be established.

Minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for Skills and Digital Transformation, Senator Dr. the Hon. Dana Morris Dixon, underscored that Jamaica cannot have digital transformation to the extent and scale desired, without the widespread adoption of cloud technology across government.

“I know that cloud adoption has been a grey area for many entities. While we see some cloud adoption guidelines… we have them, you can always find them on the eGov Jamaica website… we do, however, require a cloud policy,” she explained.

Senator Morris Dixon delivered the main address during eGov Jamaica’s Technology Month GovTech Talk on Thursday (November 16), under the theme ‘The Future of Digital Transformation for the Government of Jamaica and the Nation’.

“This is not policy for policy’s sake. It is impossible for all entities to continue building out their own infrastructure for hosting solutions. Rather, we should leverage the Government’s data centre that has a disaster recovery facility in place,” she said.

Senator Morris Dixon explained that data centre consolidation will be an incremental and coordinated activity led by the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Authority.

She shared that the first phase would be the migration of existing services, including servers, to the co-location facility in the GOJ Data Centre.

That phase, the Minister said, would be followed by the migration from the co-location facility to GovCloud.

She indicated that the Government’s cloud adoption strategy is not just a vision but a strategy that paves the way for a more efficient, secure and transparent government.

“This journey towards cloud adoption has been somewhat unstructured, leading to several challenges, including vendor-driven adoption, data classification issues, cyber risks and underutilised resources. However, I believe that these challenges are not roadblocks but rather opportunities for improvement,” Senator Morris Dixon shared.

She further shared that one of the key pillars of this strategy is the establishment of GovCloud, a centralised and secure platform that will revolutionise Jamaica’s approach to ICT.

“This initiative will not only centralise the ICT budget but will also mandate GovCloud for local hosting, ensuring greater control and security over our data. Additionally, negotiating enterprise-scale cloud contracts and addressing data classification will fortify our system against cyber risks and provide a solid foundation for a more robust ICT infrastructure,” Senator Morris Dixon stated.