Tasmania prepares for cloud transition

By 2018 government agencies will have closed their existing data centres

Under a policy unveiled in October, Tasmanian government agencies will have transitioned most of their ICT to ‘on-island’ cloud services by 2018.

The state government this week offered new details of its Networking Tasmania III panel arrangements, which will provide networking and data centre services and help underpin the transition to the “Tasmanian Cloud”.

TasmaNet, Tasmanian Networks (TasNetworks), Telstra and TPG will provide networking services to government agencies under agreements worth around $95 million over 13 years.

In October the government switched from Telstra to TPG for whole-of-government Internet services under a Networking Tasmania III contract awarded in July (to iiNet, which is now owned by TPG).

Government contracts for data centre services worth an estimated $10.4 million over 13 years have been awarded to TasmaNet and TasNetworks.

The government said it is negotiating with a third tenderer over plans to establish new data centre facilities in Tasmania.

The Liberal government's ICT policy states that it will “set a goal of moving whole-of-government data to the Tasmanian Cloud (secure, on-island data centres) – setting an example for other major organisations such as the University of Tasmania, local government and Tasmanian businesses.”

“By establishing a four-year goal of moving to on-island data sovereignty arrangements (where all public sector data is stored on data centres within Tasmania) we will be protecting security of data, employing Tasmanians and reducing the cost of data traffic on the Bass Strait links,” the policy states.

Version 1.0 of Tasmania’s cloud policy, unveiled in October, envisages that by the end of 2018, all agencies will have closed their existing data centres and be progressively moving away from owning server and storage infrastructure.

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“The objective of the Tasmanian Cloud initiative is that agencies must locate, where this is feasible and meets agency business requirements, most of their information and services in the on-island Tasmanian Cloud,” the policy states.

“The Tasmanian Cloud is to be achieved through whole of government Tasmanian Cloud agreements for data centre services (DCaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and related services, provided under NT [Networking Tasmania] which agencies must utilise,” it states.

PaaS and SaaS used by agencies should be hosted in the Tasmanian Cloud if possible.

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