AGIMO readies data centre panel contract

James Riley
Thursday, 10 September 2009 14:29

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

"That might be purely from the market, it might be in partnership arrangements, it might be some agencies collaborating together and then having a facility – which may even be a major big commercial facility with a large part is segregated as ‘G ‘for government."

In the short to medium term, Steward said the strategy would likely focus generally “cleaning up” existing data centre facilities and infrastructure, with efficiency improvements being targeted through platform consolidation and software, through virtualisation programs.

But as AGIMO readies for its end of year deadline to delivery its strategy to Government, Steward says it has nearly completed the creation of a panel of suppliers for data centre services. This interim measure aimed to meet demands among departments and agencies with urgent constraints that could not wait for the completion of the overall strategy.

Regardless, Steward said the interim measures that would be enabled by the panel would be consistent with longer term plans – and that panels formation would be a good indicator of Government’s plans.

"Because some agencies were coming to the end of a contract period or the like, we have already done an aggregation of their demand ... of agencies that need to move earlier than that would be able to happen on the whole process," Steward said.

"So we have been out to market and established a panel so that agencies can go to those suppliers who have been assessed as having the range of facilities that we want."

"We have done this with a coordinated approach. We have much better clarity around price and around the services that are being supplied - and those that are not just Canberra based but in other areas of Australia."

“This is a major point of informing into the overall data centre strategy."