Clouds slightly sullied, but still on Government horizon

Beverley Head
Tuesday, 31 May 2011 17:12

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

Recent high profile cloud computing failures have 'slightly sullied' the opinion of Glenn Archer, first assistant secretary in the Department of Finance and Deregulation, with regard to their robustness, but he still believes that the migration toward cloud based computing by the public sector is inevitable.

Speaking to a packed cloud computing session at Cebit in Sydney today Mr Archer said that the Government's policy toward cloud computing, release in April this year was basically that departments; 'May choose cloud based services where they demonstrate value for money and adequate security.'  He said that there were already a number of examples of departments moving to both internal and hybrid clouds, even public clouds in some cases.

The migration of citizen data to clouds was likely to be a much longer term prospect he acknowledged. Mr Archer said that the Government approach was 'unashamedly tactical in nature' as it was important to be pragmatic regarding any move to cloud based services.

Nevertheless the Department of Finance had moved to use cloud based storage, the Department of Immigration was running a hybrid cloud based visa lodgement , and the Australian Bureau of Statistics had an internal private infrastructure cloud already up and running.

'Right now there are enormous opportunities for us in the cloud and we don't even have to go to the problematic areas like citizen information,' said Mr Archer.

To facilitate the public sector's cloud migration the Government has formed a Cloud Information Community, known as CLIC which now has a formal information sharing relationship with the AIIA's cloud task force. Mr Archer also said that the Defence Signals Directorate had been working on security issues and that the National Archives would shortly release a records management guide regarding the storage of Government records in clouds.

He said that experience to date had proved that cost savings had not proved the biggest incentive for the migration to clouds for Government departments. Instead it was the financial agility provided by the migration away from capital expenditure to operating expenditure that had been a major driver.

'We are not having to bid for large amounts of money' for a project according to Mr Archer.

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