Illawarra Minister Greg Pearce will make the announcement today following last week's release of a government review into how it manages its IT infrastructure.

Specialist construction firm Metronode will build the hub, however the contract has not yet been finalised.

The data hub will house much of the Government's sensitive data, alongside a similar facility planned for Silverwater.

The facility was feared scrapped when Labor lost office in the last state election and the Liberal Government decided to review its IT infrastructure after taking government.

It also suffered a number of setbacks with three of the five short-listed tenderers believed to have pulled out.

Construction was reportedly due to begin in 2010, with the new facility online by 2011.

Mr Pearce said the hub will be open by the end of 2013, providing a boost for the Illawarra economy.

"The two centres will provide up to nine megawatts each of IT load, allowing the NSW Government to consolidate government data centres and reduce unnecessary technologies used by government in its daily operations," he said.

"The decommissioning of existing data capacity [will] begin once the new facilities are complete."

The announcement is good news for a region under pressure from the downturn in the manufacturing sector.

The Mercury revealed today that BlueScope Steel's decision in August last year to scale back its Port Kembla plant will cost the region about 2567 direct and indirect jobs.

Both the Federal and State Governments are pinning their hope of an economic recovery on the area's burgeoning ICT sector.

The University of Wollongong pumps out more communications graduates than any other university in the country. But the sector remains small in the Illawarra, with graduates being lured out of the region once graduating.

The communications sector employs about 1.3 per cent of Wollongong's workforce or about 1800 people, in contrast to steel-making which employs more than 10,000 workers.