Saturday 26th August 2023
The Data Governance and Data Policy being drafted for submission to National Executive Council is an important document to enable data sharing across government.
Department of Information and Communications Technology Deputy Secretary, Policy, Mr Flierl Shongol, clarified at a Data Governance and Data Policy Validation workshop held on 8 August, 2023, that through this policy, the department wants to put in place a system to enable sharing of data.
“We need to put in place a mechanism to coordinate the sharing of data across all of government and make that data available to our citizens and businesses.
“From DICT’s perspective, it is a mandate given to the department through the Digital Government Act 2022.
“And the reason for us to have this consultation workshop is to get feedback from our stakeholders which is important in refining the draft policy before final submission to NEC”.
While the country and government is at a stage where the various roles and functions of departments and state agencies have progressed, especially with the emergence and development in technology, the urgent need to have access to timely and secured data is important to enable vital and efficient government service delivery
DICT’s policy manager David Kapi reminded stakeholders at the validation workshop, the data governance policy will inform the drafting of the data governance and protection legislation to give teeth to the policy itself to make sure we have a pathway policy to create a framework.
“We want to ensure a pathway, and DICT will not own any of these data.
“The policy’s intention is to ensure sharing is happening but in a sequent and controlled
environment for government service delivery purposes.
“The Digital Government Act 2022, Digital Transformation Policy 2020 and Digital Government Plan 2023-2027 outline these and the data governance policy is a subset policy that will enable all this things to happen,” Mr Kapi said.
It is anticipated that through this data governance policy, it will enable DICT build a secured data exchange platform and government portal where all the government systems will be able to communicate and share data.
After the validation and consolidation process, the final refined policy will be prepared for submission to NEC for endorsement to trigger the drafting of the legislation.
PNG Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai, who attended the workshop acknowledged the DICT for coming up such policy initiative regarding data handling and data control systems in PNG.
“As an end user for data specifically for running the election, we need accurate and updated data to be able to conduct any election at the Ward level, and this has been a challenge over the years.
“I see that this policy is the step in the right direction to enable government agencies be able and open to share relevant data for service delivery to the people” Mr Sinai said.