Serpro to invest over 70% of the 1bn reais planned for Brazil's sovereign cloud infra

This is an automated translation of the original release published in Portuguese.

Press release from Serpro.

Serpro and its Government Cloud will have an essential participation in the execution of the National Artificial Intelligence Plan, providing a cloud computing infrastructure that will guarantee the sovereignty and responsible treatment of the country's data and that will be the reference for Brazilian AI. Therefore, the company will invest 710 million reais of the 1 billion reais foreseen in the federal government's plan.

The values indicated for the consolidation of the national data infrastructure are described in Axis 3 of the National Plan focused on “AI for the Improvement of Public Services”. The document envisions a cloud managed exclusively by public bodies or companies, with the challenge of protecting confidential data, ensuring privacy, availability and appropriate management of hosted information. Technology that Serpro already has with its Government Cloud.

The Serpro Government Cloud was launched in November 2023 and has an investment plan of 710 million reais for the coming years. Already in 2024, the company has increased the capacity of its cloud, with the implementation of more computing resources and new technologies, such as AI solutions, which will be fully incorporated into the federal state IT infrastructure, to be trained within the culture and language Brazilians.

This means that Serpro has already initiated a necessary action for an activity foreseen in the National AI Plan, which prescribes the development of “advanced language models in Portuguese, with national data that encompass our cultural, social and linguistic diversity, to strengthen sovereignty in AI.”

“In November this year, Serpro will practically double its infrastructure capacity, data storage, and with a very important perspective of using artificial intelligence. The company will have the possibility, together with the federal government and society, to deal with the ethical and cultural issues of AI programming, which are indispensable for our sovereignty,” declares the president of Serpro, Alexandre Amorim.

Serpro has the Southern Hemisphere's only 100% sovereign cloud

Serpro inaugurated a new era of digital sovereignty in cloud services with the launch of the Government Cloud in November 2023. The company's solution was born setting new standards in data security and digital autonomy for the country's public institutions. Only five other initiatives in the world have a sovereign technology like that of the Brazilian IT company.

The Government Cloud was Serpro's immediate response to SGD/MGI Ordinance No. 5,950, published on October 26, 2023, which was created to help Federal Executive Branch bodies adapt to the new legal framework. The document, which establishes the model for contracting software and cloud computing services from these bodies, determines that data processed in a cloud environment must be stored in datacenters located in Brazilian territory.

The environment developed by Serpro presents itself as a guarantee that the data of the Brazilian population and government data are stored in a protected environment, not only for safekeeping, but to provide care and treatment of this information, a 100% sovereign cloud in national territory. The data will be in a location fully controlled by Serpro.

What is a sovereign cloud?

Serpro's Government Cloud can be called sovereign because it has complete technological, operational and data autonomy, with total governance over all resources involved. It is a cloud computing model that is managed and localized within a specific country, meeting local security, privacy and regulatory compliance requirements.

By being stored and processed within the national territory, it is guaranteed that the data is not subject to foreign jurisdictions. With the national sovereign cloud it is also possible to ensure and audit that the processing of this information complies with the General Data Protection Law (LGPD), prioritizing the privacy of the Brazilian people's data.

Another important feature of the Serpro Government Cloud is data governance, as the company has strict control over how and who can access and manage the information, with full operational autonomy, even if there is equipment from partner companies, as these have no connection with said suppliers.