Finance begins work on whole-of-gov cloud panel

The Department of Finance has asked members of the IT industry to relay their experiences selling cloud products into the Commonwealth, as it prepares the groundwork for a whole-of-government cloud panel.

The agency is beginning to make progress on some of the Government's pre-election committments - located in its ‘Policy for E-Government and the Digital Economy’ - including a dramatic boost in the adoption of cloud services, particularly amongst smaller agencies.

The notion of a ‘cloud panel’ has also recently received the endorsement of the National Commission of Audit.

Finance assistant secretary Mundi Tomlinson today explained in a blog post how the Department plans to use the expiry of its data-centre-as-a-service multi-use list in October as a trigger for the proposed transition to a more extensive cloud procurement arrangement.

Procurements through the DCaaS list are currently capped in terms of contract value and duration, something Finance has been looking to overturn for some time.

Tomlinson invited the industry to respond to a short survey asking about the cloud services they offer, the location of their hosting and the main obstacles they come across in trying to sell cloud products into government.

Some major vendors have already spoken out about the challenges of supplying cloud services into Canberra.

Earlier this year Microsoft described a policy requiring agencies to seek sign off from two different ministers before hosting privacy sensitive data offshore as a “hurdle” and a “procedural barrier” to agencies leveraging cloud services, at odds with the Government’s pro-cloud rhetoric.