Starting in 2025, government applications will begin transitioning to a new platform solution. This was announced today during a briefing following the government meeting by the Minister of Digital Development, Innovations, and Aerospace Industry, Jaslan Madiyev, as reported by a correspondent from the Kapital.kz business information center.
In response to a journalist's question regarding the memorandum of cooperation signed in September 2022 with the UAE-based company Group 42, while he was the First Deputy Minister of Digital Development, the minister emphasized that there is no monopoly in this matter.
“G-42 is simply one of the companies, potential partners in this area. We are also open to collaboration with other major BigTech companies and large investment holdings. G42 is a holding with which we have a partnership in the field of artificial intelligence, and today, Kazakhstan is, as everyone knows, building supercomputing capabilities necessary for data processing during the training of AI models, and later using these models in various sectors of the economy,” he noted.
He confirmed that the memorandum provides for collaboration in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and the creation of a cloud for government applications.
“Regarding your specific question about whether we are transitioning to the platform of an Arab holding or company, I can tell you that we are not. Our KazTech platform is developed by domestic developers. It is supported and is currently fully owned by the National Information Technologies JSC, which is developing it independently. There is an understanding of how to scale this platform model and how to develop it based on microservices: a unified development environment, Secure by Design, and so on. All of this is done in collaboration with the Kazakh IT community,” clarified the head of the Ministry of Digital Development.
In practice, the ministry expects that this will provide a more convenient and faster way for all developers and government agencies to bring products into industrial use.
“The employees of the State Technical Service of the National Security Committee will monitor from the very beginning of the code development process for each product. Currently, how does the process happen? First, you build the product, and then you submit the code for analysis to the state technical service, which takes 3-6 months to review it. Here, however, it is the Secure by Design approach. State technical service employees are present from the very start in the unified development environment, during the code construction, testing, and prior to its industrial use. This is a top standard, and I believe it will enhance the security of our IT products and platforms,” the minister specified.
Currently, the platforms are undergoing certification for information security, and their integration will begin in 2025.
“We cannot promise that all products will be migrated at once. As you understand, historically, many information systems have been developed, written, and so forth by various government agencies, so some of them need to be updated or rewritten because the technology of product development based on microservices represents a different approach. Therefore, this will be conducted next year. An audit of these products, information systems, and other government agencies will be carried out to determine what can be migrated, what does not make sense to migrate, and what is better left as is until the system's lifecycle expires. A very meticulous analysis is required here,” Jaslan Madiyev clarified.
According to him, in international practice, when such a transition occurs from the classic old method of information systems to a new platform solution, there is a period during which both systems coexist in parallel.
“Then, according to the migration plan, a careful transition begins with all necessary security measures. Next year, starting in 2025, these two systems will coexist,” the minister added.