“The Data and Cloud Policy seeks to strengthen the capacity of the State to deliver services to its citizens, ensure informed policy development based on data analytics, as well as promote South Africa’s data sovereignty and the security thereof,” the draft policy states.

“The envisaged overall policy framework on data and cloud must be biased towards open standards and open systems, including open source frameworks rather than closed and exclusive systems.”

“The HPCDPC will leverage the existing computing capacity and technical capabilities of the CSIR and SITA, and will operate in conformance with international best practice,” the draft policy states.

Looks like South Africa is starting to stand up to Big Tech now and ensure more ownership and competition over solutions. This bodes well for the future if it goes through. Goodbye vendor lock-in!

Those interested in commenting on government’s proposed National Data and Cloud Policy have 30 working days from 1 April to do so.

See https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cloud-hosting/392105-south-africas-plan-to-launch-stated-owned-cloud-computing-mega-network.html

#technology #southafrica #opensource #openstandards #cloud

    • poVoq
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      33 years ago

      Which predictably has become a total failure…

      But maybe this South African initiative will fair better /s

      • Mwalimu
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        23 years ago

        I have not followed up with the project and would like to know the reasons for the failure.

        • poVoq
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          3 years ago

          AFAIK they tasked the German Telekom with building it (due to the typical legal corruption), and they are hilariously bad at doing stuff like that, yet continue to get such government contracts… But in this case it was so bad, that even other government departments refused to use it, so the entire thing is basically in limbo right now as no-one wants to use it.

          • Mwalimu
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            63 years ago

            Change on this things cannot be led by the same ideologies that put us in them. Most folks leading government and businesses are led by ideas of centralization and winner-takes-all, while open standards seek to flatten the field, as much as possible. So sad it failed not because of the weakness of the idea but by the implementation process.

    • GadgeteerZAOP
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      13 years ago

      Ironically enough we were just wondering today who was behind the drafting of the policy, and where they perhaps lifted it from ;-)