Government of Iraq initiates National Data Center

Mohammed Shia' Al-Sudani, Iraq's Prime Minister, has inaugurated the National Data Center. This week, the facility was inaugurated at the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers in Baghdad by the Prime Minister. Very little information has been disclosed about the data center, which has also been referred to as a "National Cloud Facility," including its dimensions and/or IT capacity.

The data center is part of the nation's "digital transformation," a goal backed by organizations such as the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, the UK Government Digital Service, the World Food Programme, the International Cooperation Agency, the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and IMMAP.

Al-Sudani also presided over a meeting of the Electronic Government Committee's advisory team, during which he emphasized the significance of data aggregation for citizen services, such as more efficient administration of the food ration card program. Al-Sudani stated that government agencies will "fulfill all financial requirements" and support digital transformation decisions and measures. According to the Data Center Journal, Iraq houses three data centers operated by GCCIT, Alamiyya Co., and Talia. All three are located in Baghdad, the metropolis of Iraq.

In September 2022, the autonomous region of Kurdistan's government launched a data center. The only information revealed about the data center was that it was constructed to Tier III specifications. Iraq's Minister of Construction, Housing, Municipalities, and Public Works announced plans to build a national land management data center in April to count, administrate, and identify land ownership and usage. It was also stated that the proposed data center would "serve as an information bank for any government or planning agency." It is unclear whether this is the same data center construction endeavor