Tasmania to build on-island cloud for community and government services

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news The Tasmanian Government has announced it will build an on-island cloud service that will host most government data and services in the near future.

Government documents say that the project is aimed to “better serve the needs of the Tasmanian community, as well as support 
the local ICT industry, including moving the majority of Government data to the Tasmanian 
Cloud”.

Establishment of the Tasmanian Cloud is part of a broader data centre action strategy to move government IT infrastructure and business applications from “in-house arrangements into commercially contracted, specialised data centres”. This is projected to “enhance Government’s data security and support the local ICT industry”.

The Tasmanian Cloud project is part of Networking Tasmania (NT) III – the local government’s outsourced and managed data network arrangements set up in 2014 to establish the “next generation of data network and related ICT services”.

NT III is planned to include a number of contracts with local industry suppliers for the delivery of network, Internet, datacentre, Wi-Fi and related ICT services.

These services will underpin the operations of government by enabling the “secure electronic transmission and storage of government information” within and between agencies and to external third parties.

The NT III agreements are a “key element” in the delivery of the Tasmanian Cloud project, and will include enhanced data centre and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) arrangements which “utilise and build the expert services of the local ICT industry”.

The Tasmanian Cloud will use services provided by multiple suppliers, to “securely support key public sector data and ICT services”.

As well as government departments, NT III and the Tasmanian Cloud are aimed to benefit various sectors such as:

  • Education services
  • Courts
  • Child services
  • Emergency management
  • Police forces
  • Service Hubs, Service Tasmania and LINC (libraries)

A request for tender is already underway for data centre services and a second request for tender, for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), will be announced soon.

The Tasmanian Government plans to have located most of its information and services in the Tasmanian Cloud and closed other existing data centres by the end of 2018.

The government says it has ensured the ICT industry has been consulted and informed “at every step of the process” in order to achieve the “best possible result” for Tasmanians accessing public services, as well as opportunities for local ICT businesses.

Image credit: Ian Armstrong, Creative Commons