The NSW government has established a dedicated panel structure for departments and agencies to source private or community cloud services for classified public sector data. Last Monday, the ‘protective security policy framework zone three colocation services panel’ was formed to supplement current services provided by Government Data Centre (GovDC) sites.
The obligatory panel should only be used “when an agency requires private or community cloud with the security rating of guarded.” Agencies will need an exception from the government’s cloud policy and circular, which requires all NSW agencies to use cloud services as a matter of course.
Last year, the government implemented the “public cloud first” strategy to promote public and private cloud adoption when replacing or renewing current services, platforms, and infrastructure. It anticipates that by 2023, all agencies will be adopting public cloud “for at least 25% of their ICT services.”
When the public cloud is insufficient to meet an agency’s needs, private cloud services provided by GovDC can be used as an “exception.” The administration has yet to reveal who will be on the new panel. The new panel was established two months after the government sought the market to increase the amount of whole-of-government cloud buying agreements (CPA).
The CPA is a contract with public cloud providers that allows agencies to use infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service(PaaS). Only Vault, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and IBM have signed into CPA contracts.
