Q&A: AGIMO's John Sheridan on data centre strategy

Computerworld catches up with the First Assistant Secretary of the Australian Government Information Management Office

First Assistant Secretary of the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO), John Sheridan.

First Assistant Secretary of the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO), John Sheridan.

CW: How has the data centre space changed since the 2008 review into government ICT spending by Sir Peter Gershon and what effect has this had on AGIMO?

JS: We were doing some of this work before Sir Peter wrote his report but we’ve certainly coalesced as a consequence of that [report], with the aim of avoiding $1 billion worth of costs. We know that the interim panel that we put out as a consequence of that work gave us particularly good savings in the leasing area by aggregating demand and we’ve been quite happy with that.

That’s been consistent with the other whole-of-government activities we’ve seen in the ICT procurement space, which largely has shown us that we can get savings in the sort of 20 to 30 per cent by aggregating government demand in this area. What we’re also seeing, as we expected to occur, is the market looking for solutions. We’ve seen work in a whole range of places around improved offerings from data centre providers which Sir Peter predicted would happen. It’s just a matter of making sure the government takes advantages of those.

CW: Have there been any policy or other obstacles to implementing that strategy?

JS: I think it’s important to remember the public service generally and the ICT community, particularly in the public service, work together on these things to get the right sort of outcome. It’s not like AGIMO is somehow forced to push out on its own; we work in a very close relationship with a range of other agencies in this regard. We work very closely with large agencies but we also have regular meetings with smaller agencies.

We have steering groups that progress these whole-of-government activities. It’s not so much overcoming obstacles as progressing together to get the outcome that government wants.

CW: Given the pace of developments within the data centre industry and government departments over the past year, is there any threat of the 15-year strategy becoming outdated or out of line with government requirements?

I don’t believe so. Like all of our co-ordinated procurement arrangements, we don’t intend to create some sort of train smash effect or be a break on progress in these areas. Where agencies have a requirement to progress things faster than the timeframe of the whole-of-government activity, they’re allowed to apply for and generally given permission to do so.

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Tags data centresAustralian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO)

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