Federal Cabinet Approves Cloud-First Policy & Personal Data Protection Bill
The Cloud First Policy has listed five classes of data, which include
open data in the public sector to make the government open and accountable and increase citizen participation. The other one is public data related to the public sector that is non-confidential and is publicly available. It is followed by restricted data related to public sector businesses, operations and services, which is not sensitive in nature. The next one is confidential data, which is the information not intended to be published. It can be accessed only by a certain group of people having proper authorisation and which justifies moderate protective measures. The last one is secret data which is the information that requires the highest level of protection from serious threats. Its breach can pose a threat to life or public security, cause financial losses, serious damage to public interests, etc.
The cloud policy highlighted that the federal government had around 40 divisions and more than 600 affiliated departments. Moreover, there were numerous provincial ministries and their affiliated departments in the country. See Also: Pakistan Planning Semiconductors Zone with Chinese help – Fawad Chaudhry It needs to establish a ‘Cloud Board’ comprising IT secretary as chairman, chief secretaries of the four provinces and two IT experts. The ‘Cloud Office’ will oversee the accreditation, quality, security and departmental IT affairs of cloud service providers. The Cloud Board will accredit the cloud service providers with the required capabilities and equipment.
Personal Data Protection Bill:
The Federal Cabinet also approved the Personal Data Protection Bill that will ensure the protection of online data, information and privacy of Pakistani citizens. The minister said that the aim of the Personal Data Protection Bill was to ensure national security and the protection of online data and personal information of ordinary citizens including the business community. The bill has been the demand of various sections of society including the civil society that all relevant public and private institutions need to ensure that their data, services, ICT products and systems are in line with the cyber security requirements. Check Also: KPK to Launch ‘Digital Skills Training Programme’ for Youth
