Is the
Cloud First Policy a step towards digitising the country? The policy has made many tall claims, but will it be able to come through on any of them? By Ahtasam Ahmad
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here has for the longest time been a lot of noise around ‘Digital Pakistan.’ The idea that a big part of Pakistan turning into a developed nation is making sure that we adopt technology early and choose digitisation both in governance and everyday life. A ‘Digital Pakistan’ is supposed to create a digital ecosystem with infrastructure and institutional frameworks for the rapid delivery of innovative digital services, applications and content. Essentially, making sure everything is online, accessible, operable, and convenient. To this end, one of the most recent developments
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has been a draft of Pakistan’s first ever cloud policy on 15 February, 2022. The IT ministry’s draft has already been approved by the cabinet, and is being claimed by the government as a game changer in digitising the country’s economic as well as administrative infrastructure. Essentially, it is exactly what it sounds like. The government is preparing to shift all of its data from hard memory disks to a cloud based system - much like you might have on your phone with iCloud or Google Storage. However, when data is being put up onto a cloud in such large quantities, matters are a little more complicated. The most essential part of this effort will be pushing to make sure that all new data entries are made directly to the cloud after it
is thoroughly tested to make sure there are no glitches or mishaps, and then forming a team dedicated to categorising and uploading old data to this cloud as well. And of course, before all of those making sure this cloud is encrypted from multiple ends and completely safe will be of the utmost importance given how sensitive the information being uploaded will be. The only question is, how convincing is this Cloud First Policy?
What’s a cloud?
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t’s pretty obvious by now we’re not talking about the fluffy white things in the sky that sometimes turn grey and shower rain upon us. What we’re referring to is a wireless ‘cloud’ system of data storage. Cloud
