Johannesburg, 26 Apr 2023
Cloud adoption fast tracks transformation across numerous sectors. This was the consensus shared at the recently held executive event hosted by AWS in collaboration with ITWeb on accelerating cloud adoption in the private sector.
At this event, the new Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Mondli Gungubele, commended the private sector for investments made to date to develop the South African cloud environment, and called for further collaboration to uplift, empower and upskill South Africans to thrive in a cloud-enabled world.
“Covid-19 has propelled all sectors of society to reconsider how they operate in delivering services. Now more than ever, the adoption of agile and innovative digital technology is critical to service delivery,” he said.
“We appreciate the enormous investment that has been made by the private sector in the South African cloud,” he said, noting that hyperscalers in South Africa had committed to local infrastructure development, investment, employment, and skills development.
“The emergence of cloud technology has spurred our digital transformation journey and opened a plethora of opportunities in the digital economy. In a world where digital technologies have become part of our daily lives, the government is looking for efficient ways to harness the capabilities of these technologies to improve the lives of our people,” he added.
He noted that his department had a critical role to play in enabling digital transformation across all levels of society. “By digitising government service offerings, not only do we encourage our citizens to adapt to digital transformation, but we also induce demand for digital services. This will result in a society that gradually becomes digitally literate and begins to engage in digital activities, such as e-commerce.”
“We believe cloud is one of the technologies that can create enablement. It is also the most convenient and cost-effective way of delivering services to citizens anywhere, at any time, and to scale up or down our IT requirements. It’s no longer about the ‘if’, but ‘how soon’ we can migrate to cloud,” he added.
“As government, we acknowledge our responsibility to create an environment conducive for cloud adoption across government, and to support investment in cloud and data centres across the country. Our intention is not to create rules that create impediments to the social and economic upliftment of our people through digital transformation, but rather we aim to enable inclusive economic and digital transformation. From a regulatory perspective, our focus will be on the need for quality, fast, reliable and secure digital infrastructure that ensures internet connectivity to all our citizens,” he said.
He also acknowledged that any dreams of digital transformation could not be achieved without universal access.
He noted that digital skills development was crucial across government and society to support not just digital literacy, but also to ensure that cloud adoption benefits everyone in the form of innovation and the development of digital trade.
“The literacy of the future is digital. Our country cannot be found wanting. There may be millions of new roles for people in the 4IR, but they will be digital. People had to be trained to enable them to embrace 4IR opportunities,” he said.
AWS steps up commitment to enabling SA
Also addressing the event, Rashika Ramlal, Public Sector Country Leader at AWS, noted that AWS was born in South Africa, and is committed to supporting the country’s development. She highlighted AWS’s R15 billion investment in South African cloud infrastructure from 2018 to 2022, and plans to invest a further R30 billion by 2029. AWS’s investment in South Africa from 2018-2022 has contributed ZAR 12 billion in gross domestic product (GDP), while supporting an estimated average of 5,700 full-time equivalent jobs. AWS launched a 10MW solar power plant in the Northern Cape in 2021, which is expected to generate up to 28,000MWh of renewable energy per year.
“AWS is proudly South African and home grown. We want to help digitise and automate the citizen journey from cradle to grave. We want to change South Africa’s trajectory to ensure our children have a great education system, a great healthcare system and great, digitised government services. We are not just a cloud services provider, we are a partner to South Africa,” Ramlal said.
In a panel discussion on accelerating cloud adoption in the public sector, Kutlwano Chaba, Chief Digital Officer at SALGA, and Norbit Williams, CIO at the Department of Public Enterprises, highlighted progress made and challenges in the way of digital transformation. They noted that using the cloud, open data and shared platforms and services helped fast track transformation. Among the challenges to be overcome were siloed data, skills, and security.
Chaba said: “Security is one of the key challenges we face. Every second or third week, a municipality is hit.” He said using the cloud enabled SALGA to offer municipalities common platforms, frameworks and tools to address risks and skills shortages, and reduce the cost and complexity of their digital transformation.
Williams said the Department of Public Enterprises had recently migrated its services to the AWS cloud in only a month. “The cloud is the primary component for us to share services and data across our enterprises,” he said.
In closing, Minister Gungubele said, “We believe that the universal adoption of cloud across government will require collaboration with the sector to create a skills regime that supports effective cloud adoption and innovation. We also appeal to the industry to begin to examine your production and distribution value chains and identify opportunities for SMMEs in your value chain, and to support youth and women owned SMMEs.”
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