Interview: Centrelink CIO John Wadeson

iTnews: I understand you've leased some space in a new data centre facility in Canberra. How close to capacity was Centrelink running at Bruce and Tuggeranong prior to making that decision?

Wadeson: It was pretty much full. And more importantly, we had little power left to work with at our existing facilities. We had to have another facility.

iTnews: Were you expecting AGIMO to make a decision sooner on a whole of Government strategy?

Wadeson: We'd identified this need for a little while. Centrelink has worked with AGIMO and ATO and others for some time on formulating a whole of Government strategy, everyone I know in the Commonwealth wants a whole of Government strategy for data centres.

We describe this move as a staging area to prepare us for whatever comes from the whole of Government strategy.

iTnews: What are some of the benefits of the new space?

It will facilitate our virtualisation program. It is good quality data centre space. This is the first time a Government department is using pods.

iTnews: You mean containerised data centres?

Wadeson: Yes. No one within the Government has ever used them before. And we are doing things inside these pods that have never been done before [see attached story]. We're putting in equipment and have the vendors agreement to do this. We're moving into new territories.

iTnews: Is it true you guys have to move off your Tuggerenong data centre by 2012?

Wadeson: Where did you read that?

iTnews: I believe it was reported in The Australian...

Wadeson: It's not true. And in any case, this isn't a problem around leases. We can always renew a lease. The problem is the age of the data centres and the power fed to them.

iTnews: While $4.88m is a lot to spend on leasing data centre space, do you expect to save some money in the long run from new data centres, at least in terms of power use?

Wadeson: You think it's a lot to spend? I don't think so. This is good quality data centre space. With Centrelink, a failure in a data centre would cost a lot more than that in one night!

iTnews: How are your plans to implement the contactless staff ID card coming along?

Wadeson: I had my photo taken just yesterday! The network should be done before the end of the year.

iTnews: And biometric voice ID? You were conducting a trial among ten staff at last count? Where is it at now?

Wadeson: We are well into the thousands of voices registered now. Customers were able to go live since the beginning of June. Now that our call centres are over those spikes caused by the stimulus packages, we have more time to focus on it.