Pakistan Examines Locally Hosted AI Cloud for Government Digital Services
Islamabad: The Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication (MoITT) has received six applications from cloud service providers seeking accreditation under the government’s Cloud First Policy, the National Assembly was informed.
The information was shared in a written reply by Minister for IT and Telecom Shaza Fatima Khawaja in response to a question from MNA Syeda Amnah Batool. The applications are currently under assessment by the ministry.
The minister said MoITT has examined the potential use of Pakistan’s locally hosted Artificial Intelligence Cloud and Data Centre, established by Data Vault Pakistan. The facility, launched in November in collaboration with Nvidia, includes sovereign AI, GPU-as-a-Service, and AI Cloud capabilities, and is designed to support government digital services while ensuring data residency, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance.
However, the minister clarified that MoITT has not yet been formally onboarded for production workloads related to the AI Cloud and Data Centre, and Data Vault Pakistan has not submitted an application for accreditation.
Subject to government procedures, security clearances, and inter-ministerial consultation, the ministry may consider pilot projects and phased adoption of the infrastructure in the future. Potential areas of application include e-governance and digital public service platforms, cybersecurity initiatives such as Security Operations Centres (SOCs) and the national Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), secure government data hosting and analytics, sector-specific AI use cases, and public sector AI research and innovation.
#Pakistan #ITPolicy #CloudFirst #AICloud #DataVaultPakistan #Cybersecurity #DigitalServices #diplomatsWorld
