General Director of Samruk-Kazyna Business Service LLP David Tuganov spoke about information technology development of Samruk-Kazyna Sovereign Wealth Fund JSC (hereinafter – the Fund) during the Expert Council of Information and Communication Technology that was held on 20th of January in Astana. Representatives of Association of IT Companies, as well as representatives of national and foreign companies participated in this event chaired by the Head of Zerde National ICT Holding JSC Asel Zhienbayeva.

Proposed IT development concept is aimed at achieving Fund’s strategic objectives to increase long-term value of the Fund’s group of companies and participate in diversification and modernization of national economy. The main goal of IT department of the Fund’s portfolio companies in this regard is capacity-building of business through the use of modern information technology.

“We were able to implement many initiatives concerning information technology development in the Fund’s group of companies in the past three years. In particular, organizational structures of IT departments were reviewed, CIO (Chief Information Officer) Institute was introduced in portfolio companies, data and enterprise architecture management offices were created, the competency centers, IT shared service centers, as well as cybersecurity centers were opened. We continue to actively interact with leading technical universities in order to nurture demanded business specialists in the fields of IT, cyber security and data management,” said David Tuganov. He also noted that given the scale of Transformation Programme of Samruk-Kazyna JSC, which is aimed at increasing the integrated maturity level of the Fund’s group of companies, it is necessary to invest in the development of personnel and technology, but at the same time raise quality, reliability and software flexibility requirements.

“Effective IT development in the Fund’s group of companies is impossible without effective national information and communication technology ecosystem, thus we intend to continue our cooperation with Zerde Holding, local and international software vendors, universities and representatives of business companies. We are grateful to Zerde for providing a platform to interact and are ready for open discussions on development of IT industry in our country,” added David Tuganov.

As a result of the meeting, participants agreed that the new procurement order of Samruk-Kazyna JSC, including issues related to procurement of software and IT services will be presented at a later meeting of Expert Council.