THE Government has completed upgrades to the eGov Data Centre at a cost of $600 million.

The project, which began in 2020, forms part of the public-sector transformation programme, being managed by the Transformation Implementation Unit (TIU).

Minister of Finance and the Public Service Dr Nigel Clarke, speaking during a tour of the facility in Kingston on Thursday, said that information and communications technology (ICT) is one of the key pillars of public-sector transformation.

“It’s about making the Government more efficient, as it regards the deployment and use of technology for carrying out the functions of Government. It’s wonderful to see. There is a lot more to be done. But with what has been done so far, I can see massive efficiencies being brought to Government and security being brought to the operations of Government as well,” he said.

The centre has seen an increase of more than 100 per cent in raw storage capacity, moving from 615 to 1,300 terabytes.

The Government of Jamaica Cloud Platform has also been upgraded, offering increased capacity for the attendant services.

The upgrade also included renovation of the physical plant, the introduction of automated management tools and security components at both the primary data centre at eGov and the Disaster Recovery site in St Catherine.

Dr Clarke commended TIU and eGov for the transformation that was undertaken and committed to continue providing the necessary resources to scale up the project.

“Jamaica wins when we have an efficient data centre that can provide software as a service, infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, so that the people in ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) can do their jobs without having to worry about those details when we have a strategic focal point that worries and is concerned about those kinds of details. It’s great, it’s fantastic, and you have my support,” Dr Clarke stated.

TIU ICT Programme Manager Luke Jackson, meanwhile, said that high-speed access is a critical component of an effective data centre.

“We installed about 31 kilometres of high-speed fibre throughout the KMA (Kingston Metropolitan Area), from downtown Kingston all the way to Portmore, and during that process also connected probably 250 MDAs on the way,” he said.

Jackson added that, overall, some 700 entities have been connected, as the works in the KMA facilitated connectivity to others outside of the region, including schools, police stations and courts.