00:00A lot of the work is complete. We're doing a lot of the testing now. We're getting ready
00:04to put it out for public consumption. You'll hear more about that, I think, within the
00:10next week, week and a half.
00:12It's been almost three years since the Ministry of Digital Transformation has been created,
00:17and Minister Asalbakos is promising that the national community will soon reap the benefits.
00:23The reason why we have to do this is that many government services are initiated in
00:27one ministry and completed in another one. And so the delivery of other services requires
00:34inputs from multiple agencies, multiple ministries. The national EID and interoperability solutions
00:41of the MDT will enable ministries, departments and agencies to share relevant information
00:46and to work together seamlessly while significantly improving the ease and potentially reducing
00:52the cost of doing business with government.
00:55On a more macro level, the ministry is also nearing completion of important policy items.
01:01We're working towards, in terms of protecting our data, the full proclamation of the Data
01:04Protection Act. We've given a commitment to the parliament, we will do that. We will do
01:08that within the time frame that we have. We continue to work on the operationalisation
01:12of the Office of the Information Commissioner. And at the same time, we still want to make
01:17as much of government non-sensitive data fully available to the public.
01:22The minister says the ministry has also been putting in work to bolster all cyber security
01:27frameworks given the growing threats in the digital space.
01:31Our discussions this morning, informal discussions, I was talking about this new hacking group
01:36that has become quite successful. So much so that their initial offers for ransom only
01:43increased with time. The last one I saw, they asked for 10 million and by the time they
01:49got around to the last request, I think it was up to 50 million. So, this is something
01:57that is attracting significant attention.
02:00The minister was speaking at Amjang TT's Tech Hub Island Summit.
02:04Renessa Cutting, TV6 News.
Comments