The University of Pretoria (UP) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Institute joined forces to provide an initiative that aims to accelerate digital transformation in SA’s public sector.
This comes as the Department of Public Service and Administration’s DG recently revealed challenges facing the public service, with an ICT-skilled workforce among the notable issues.
According to a statement, the AWS Executive Education Programme targets senior government officials and leaders of state-owned enterprises.
Hosted over two days, the education programme consisted of interactive workshops, keynotes, panel discussions, question and answer sessions with ongoing individual mentoring, and peer-to-peer networking, notes the statement.
Topics of discussion included examining ways in which governments build resilience, drawing on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, meeting the needs of citizens through the provision of services, the power of data, security in the cloud, and mitigating against hacking and cyber attacks.
“The programme equipped senior public servants and elected officials with the confidence and expertise they need to lead the successful digital transformation of public services,” explains cyber security expert professor Jan Eloff, acting dean of the faculty of engineering, built environment and IT at UP.
Eloff explained that governments and industry spent billions on protecting infrastructure, but it only took one “small slip-up” of an employee to allow hackers to disrupt business.
“Today, there is an acute need to search for new approaches for improving the cost-effectiveness of cyber security safeguards. This is illustrated by recent cyber security incidents in South Africa where the majority of cases deal with the leakage of confidential data and, most often, in the ‘money transfer’ business.”
He noted that many governments, including that of SA, are disrupted by DDoS attacks and that one of the main drawbacks of attempting to understand the South African cyber security landscape is the absence of reliable reporting platforms.
However, the POPI Act has already had a positive impact on the South African cyber security landscape, according to Eloff.
Led by experienced government reformers and leading university academics, the AWS Institute is a thought-leadership and executive education programme to accelerate digital transformation for public sector executives.
Liam Maxwell, director of government transformation at AWS, states: “Governments and public sector organisations around the world face unique challenges to accomplish complex missions with limited resources.
“Modernisation starts with transforming your vision and your culture so that you can benefit from the speed, scale and security that technology can deliver. We are delighted to be collaborating with the University of Pretoria in bringing the AWS Executive Education Programme to South Africa for the first time.”
Participants have also been enrolled in the global AWS Institute Network.
“Our candidates, chosen by invitation of both UP and AWS, were made up of senior-level public sector servants and government officials − essentially, decision-makers − with the intention of the programme enabling them to confidently manage successful digital transformation initiatives in the public sector,” concludes Eloff.
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