In connection with the implementation of subparagraph 2.4.5 of the Action Plan of the “Strategic Roadmap for the Development of Telecommunications and Information Technologies in the Republic of Azerbaijan”, approved by Decree No. 1138 of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan dated 6 December 2016, the effective organization of the formation, maintenance, management and integration of state information systems and resources necessitates the creation of a centralized Government Cloud (G-cloud).
According to this Strategic Roadmap, the Government Cloud project is a large-scale project that combines cost reduction in public administration and improving coordination between government agencies by efficiently organizing the integration of government information systems and resources into a single platform.
According to Presidential Decree No.718 dated 3 June 2019 on the creation of the Government Cloud (G-cloud) and measures in the field of providing cloud services, the implementation of the Government Cloud project will ensure the operation of government information systems, deployment of their infrastructure, development of standards, and will also reduce the cost of establishing and maintaining information systems in public administration and formation of centralized infrastructure for government agencies. In this way, it will be possible to optimize government expenditure required for information technologies and the creation and provision of e-services by government bodies, to ensure that information systems are organized on a quality, sustainable and secure infrastructure based on standards that are more modern.
As stated in Decree No. 718, joint measures will be taken together with the Special State Security Service of the Republic of Azerbaijan to ensure the physical security and cyber security of the Government Cloud and comprehensively security protection of the cloud infrastructure.
With the implementation of the Government Cloud project, government bodies will be able to reduce the costs associated with IT infrastructure. Thus, cloud technology will enable more efficient use of resources by ensuring IT infrastructure management from a single platform based on the “pooling principle”. Global experience shows that governments that have switched to the Government Cloud save significantly on IT costs.
The new data centers will be adapted to current global standards for cloud services, complying with international certification TIER III of the Uptime Institute, ISO-20000 standards for the provision and management of IT services, and ISO 27001 standards for information security. Also, the equipment used in the data centers will be managed on an N+1 basis. This, in turn, means the use of spare equipment to ensure continuity of service when preventive maintenance work is carried out on any equipment or in the event of a technical failure. Thus, the correct and reliable organization of information technology management will ensure a level of stability of 99.982 per cent in all cases of safe implementation of the process.
Government agencies connected to the Government Cloud will be able to manage their allocated IT resources through self-management platform.
The architecture of the Government Cloud has been developed by the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport. Based on this architecture, the activities of the Government Cloud are planned to be implemented through four data centers, including an active, backup, archive and test data center.
