Video: Plans afoot for mass merger of Government IT

By Brett Winterford on May 25, 2010 2:57 PM
Filed under Strategy

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Centrelink to offer compute and storage grunt as-a-service.

The Federal Government plans to share Centrelink's excess compute and storage capacity with other government agencies beyond the Human Services portfolio, including a potential future consolidation of IT resources with the Australian Tax Office and Department of Immigration.

Speaking with iTnews at the CeBIT Australia trade show today, former Centrelink CIO (now Deputy Secretary of ICT Infrastructure at the Department of Human Services) John Wadeson [pictured] confirmed that Centrelink's excess compute power and 788.5 terabytes of spare SAN storage capacity will be offered as a service to other federal agencies under a plan being formulated by the Government.

"We are going to try and create a single piece of infrastructure that will house the data centre environments for all these agencies. That's the plan," Wadeson said.

"But we're not going to get there next week. It's going to take time. First of all we have to get Centrelink's data centre issues in a better position."

Legislation to support the integration of ICT within Human Services agencies - including Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support Agency - is slated for the Autumn sitting of Parliament this time next year. Should it be passed, Human Services expects a three-year integration effort to follow from 2011-2014.

According to Catherine Rule, national manager, strategy and service delivery partnerships at Centrelink, the Government is assessing whether to then bring the Australian Tax Office, Department of Immigration and various State Governments into the same shared services pool, which would take a further five years between 2015-2020.

"If you look at what's going on around the world, everyone is consolidating and wants to be in a modern, well-supported data centre environment," Wadeson told iTnews. "You can't get there on your own. You are better [off] to get together.

"Virtualisation is making what was the impossible possible. Why wouldn't we be doing it as well? I would expect everyone is having these kinds of thoughts. My expectation is the way the technology is moving, the task of getting there will get easier over time."

Privacy concerns are "childish"

Wadeson brushed off concerns that a consolidated Human Services IT portfolio - and potential tie-ups with the ATO and Immigration departments - present a privacy risk.

"Privacy is an issue we will always have to watch," he said. "But [Human Services] Minister [Chris Bowen] made it breathtakingly clear in his talk in December. We are not building a single database here. We are going to use a consent model if we share data."

Wadeson said some privacy arguments are based on "childish" notions of how enterprise computing is delivered.

"People in IT understand that you can house things on one mainframe, and there is no risk of leakage from one part of it to another."

Read on to Page Two for a status update on the integration so far...

Video: Plans afoot for mass merger of Government IT

John Wadeson, Human Services.

4 comments in this discussion

"gee go figure, the govt having a small amount of excess capacity that can run the world on..... Pink batts and the school building program seems like something the govt spent loose change on ..."

By Johnnnny

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cebit10, federal, government, centrelink, human services, wadeson, shared services, san, server, ato, immigration, workshop

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Comments: 4

Psuedo May 25, 2010 3:31 PM	I like the sounds of it all, though I don't hold my breath for how quickly everything will happen. Maybe the federal government should also be investing in allowing Local Government (in particular state by state) to host their infrastrucutre in a shared data centre. Obviously it is more complex than "just do it", but the cost savings to the community are astronomical.
JSONY May 25, 2010 4:23 PM	You know what this article or at least the content angers me as an IT professional and more so as a tax payer. which government is responsible for this latest monstrosity of gross waste of taxpayers money. QUESTION 1 - WHY DOES CENTRELINK HAVE SUCH A SURPLUS OF HARDWARE RESOURCES. Seriously is anyone not asking this basic fundamental question. Those excess resources its so "nicely" offering to other departments would have cost the taxpayer a fortune!! Who planned and budgeted this huge machine??????? Who authorized it??? what did it cost us?????? Why was it even commissioned (I mean did the capacity planner for centrelink over estimate that much???) QUESTION 2 - Why is the CEO of Centrelink not being investigated for the same questions above, clearly this is a mis-management issue ?????!!!! STATEMENT 1 - Ummm virtualization is nothing new to the joker making the comment, centralized resources are nothing new you either. They both were called mainframes! They did the job cheaper more effectively then these hugely expensive "new age storage systems" pretty as they are at the user level, nothing new there! CLOWN! STATEMENT 2. Pseudo above, the governments always had them, but with every changing government, comes a changing IT infrastructure brought on by salesman and new agendas. For 20 years I have been outsourced , re-integrated , outsourced and re-integrated again its a joke. The tax payer has been getting rorted for years but no-one ever does anything about it! We just keep voting another irresponsible labor government in and start the cycle over and over!
Silly Me May 25, 2010 6:16 PM	JSony, I'll make two points to make sure I'c covering both sides of the fence. Firstly, Centrelink would have purchased additional capacity to preparation for the GFC. You know, when the crisis hits, welfare goes up. In order to deal with lots and lots of welfare recipients, and do it well, one needs to prepare in advance - i.e. have the infrastructure, systems, processes, training, etc. well in place. Otherwise, I don't think many people would appreciate going to a Centrelink office to be told to come back in a few weeks' time when the system is able to cope with the demand. On the provision side, unless you buy into the could computing, or utility computing or insert-your-label on-demand computer, you need to buy the equipment to be ready, and when you buy it, you don't return it six months or a year later because it turns out you don't really need it (anymore). This brings me to the second point: On the supplier side, unless you're providing elastic on-demand services, once you have an order, it gets fulfilled, you get paid, and that's the end of it. I think anyone would find it difficult to believe that one should return equipment just because they don't need it anymore. It's not like my butcher prepares me 500 snags for the weekend BBQ party, and if only 50 people turn up, they are haappy to get back the remaining snags back after the party is over.
Johnnnny May 28, 2010 10:26 AM	gee go figure, the govt having a small amount of excess capacity that can run the world on..... Pink batts and the school building program seems like something the govt spent loose change on compared to this!!!!!! Yet another massive overspent govt initiative we will be paying for in mine and my children's lifetime.