Building the digital foundations of the Congolese State

The Sovereign Cloud of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the strategic infrastructures of the State's digital transformation.

It will host government platforms as well as the State's critical applications and registries in a secure, controlled environment.

The Sovereign Cloud is designed to provide several digital service models:

• Infrastructure as a Service — IaaS
• Platform as a Service — PaaS
• Software as a Service — SaaS

It will give public administrations pooled computing capacity without each having to invest in its own data centre infrastructure. The project therefore aims to improve the availability of digital public services, cut the costs of duplicated IT infrastructure, strengthen the resilience of State systems and improve control over and protection of public data. The Sovereign Cloud is also an essential platform for progressively hosting critical platforms and the future digital services of the Congolese administration.

GOVNET is the government network project intended to progressively interconnect the administrations and public institutions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is to become the backbone of the State's digital exchanges.

Through this infrastructure, administrations will be able to communicate and reach government platforms over a secure, controlled network, rather than depending solely on separate public internet connections.

GOVNET will notably enable:

• secure interconnection of public institutions
• access to Sovereign Cloud services
• secure data exchange between administrations
• improved quality and availability of digital services
• centralised supervision of network infrastructure
• greater resilience of government communications

In time, GOVNET is to help connect public institutions in Kinshasa and across the provinces alike.

As public administration digitalises further, protecting the State's infrastructure and data becomes a national priority.

The Government Security Operations Center — GOVSOC is the central facility for monitoring and responding to cybersecurity incidents affecting the Government's critical digital infrastructure.

GOVSOC will notably enable:

• monitoring of security events
• detection of cyber threats
• incident analysis
• coordination of responses to cyber attacks
• management of cybersecurity alerts
• continuous improvement of public institutions' security posture

It is intended in particular to help protect the Sovereign Cloud, GOVNET and the State's critical digital infrastructure. GOVSOC is to progressively strengthen national capacity to anticipate, detect and handle cyber incidents affecting digital public services.

Component 2 also supports the Government in building genuine Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI).

DPI rests on foundational digital components that several administrations can use to build new digital public services quickly and coherently.

These building blocks may notably cover:

• digital identity
• data exchange and interoperability
• digital trust services
• payment mechanisms
• shared government platforms

This approach avoids each ministry or institution separately rebuilding the same technical functions. DPI is therefore an essential foundation for accelerating the digitalisation of public services while improving their interoperability, security and ability to evolve.

A modern digital administration needs the ability to reliably identify the people who use its services.

With this in view, Component 2 supports the institutions concerned in strengthening and modernising national population identification and civil registration arrangements.

This work includes designing an integrated approach to identification, defining a master plan for the national identification system, and analysing and progressively modernising civil registration mechanisms.

The aim is to help establish a reliable, inclusive and interoperable identity ecosystem that eases access to public services and reduces duplication across identification systems.

Fully dematerialising administrative procedures requires mechanisms that guarantee user identity, document integrity and the legal value of electronic transactions.

Component 2 therefore supports the development of digital trust services, notably through work on electronic signature and the infrastructure needed to use it.

Developing these services should progressively allow administrations, citizens and businesses to complete more procedures entirely online, while guaranteeing the authenticity, integrity and traceability of electronic transactions.

Data is one of the strategic assets of the State's digital transformation.

Component 2 supports a national framework to improve the governance, quality, protection, sharing and value of public data.

This effort aims notably to:

• improve knowledge of the data held by administrations
• define common data management rules
• improve data quality and interoperability
• strengthen their security and protection
• ease data exchange between administrations
• progressively build capacity to analyse and derive value from public data

Data governance is also an essential condition for the State to make responsible use of emerging technologies, notably artificial intelligence.

The administration's digital transformation requires a shared vision and a coherent architecture.

The e-Government Master Plan is to define this trajectory and progressively organise the development of digital public services around a common government architecture.

The aim is notably to encourage infrastructure pooling, platform interoperability, standardisation of digital services and better coordination of the technology investments made by public administrations.

This work should also help progressively build an environment in which citizens and businesses can reach State services more simply.

Component 2 also works on several infrastructures needed for the Democratic Republic of the Congo's digital presence and autonomy.

These interventions notably concern:

• strengthening management of the national .CD domain
• improving management of IP addressing resources
• promoting IPv6
• strengthening the resilience and security of national internet infrastructure

These initiatives help strengthen the country's digital sovereignty and create a more favourable environment for digital services to develop.

Digital transformation cannot succeed through infrastructure and technology alone.

It also requires human skills able to design, operate, secure and evolve these new systems.

Component 2 therefore supports training and capacity-building initiatives in areas such as:

• cybersecurity
• digital public infrastructure
• cloud computing
• networks
• data governance
• information systems architecture
• digital transformation

The aim is to progressively strengthen the administration's internal capacity so as to sustain the investments made under the project.