Page 315 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 February 2016

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Information technology—cloud computing
(Question No 567)

Mr Doszpot asked the Chief Minister, upon notice, on 19 November 2015 (redirected to the Treasurer):

(1) What is the reasoning for the rollovers of funding for the Data Storage Infrastructure and Hybrid Cloud projects.

(2) What stage is the development and use of cloud computing at within government buildings.

(3) What are the advantages of cloud computing for the ACT.

(4) What are the potential problems associated with Hybrid Cloud projects.

Mr Barr: The answer to the member’s question is as follows:

(1) The Hybrid Cloud program needed to work through a range of governance, legal and policy issues in addition to incorporating the announcement of the Federal Government Cloud Panel and the implementation of the ACT Government Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF) during 2014/15.

The Data Storage project funding was rolled over due to the commencement of the Cloud initiative and the need to assess the impact of Cloud on the ACT Government’s current data centre profile.

(2) Over the last 18 months numerous business units across government have incorporated cloud options into their ICT projects scoping. The Government will continue to evaluate cloud initiatives on a case by case basis.

(3) Cloud computing is a contemporary method of delivering many ICT services, and has the potential to reduce the cost of ICT for Government while improving service agility. Cloud is a sourcing and delivery model for ICT which enables on-demand access to shared pools of computing resources over a network utilising a consumption based charging model.

A feature of cloud computing is the ability to standardise and automate ICT products and services. Cloud computing:

greatly increases the productivity of ICT infrastructure, meaning that more solutions can be hosted for the same amount of hardware, power, and data-centre space

significantly simplifies and automates many ICT administration tasks, reducing the cost of support and maintenance and improving the responsiveness of ICT to business needs

greatly increases business and ICT agility by reducing the time taken for infrastructure design, procurement, installation and configuration

reduces the need for Government to maintain ICT infrastructure


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