GTR Jan-Feb 2014 Sample

2014 DIGITAL GOVERNMENT CONFERENCE GUIDE see page 27

GOVERNMENT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

PRIVACY’S D-DAY LOOMS

JAN/FEB 2014 • ISSUE 22

GIVING HR THE HUMAN TOUCH GOSFORD: COUNCIL BECOMES TELCO

NBN STRATEGIC REVIEW – FULFILLING THE UC DREAM

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COVER STORY:

SMOOTH SAILING IN THE CLOUD

The path to cloud computing is finally getting easier, with early fears about data sovereignty and policy integrity giving way to reasoned commitments to cloud-based computing. In the context of a government committed to cost-cutting and prioritisation of cloud, the old excuses simply don't apply anymore. We look at the government cloud in 2014 and how its early advocates are benefiting from its capabilities.

SPECIAL FEATURES

10

38

REGULARS 2 Editor’s Letter 4 News 45 Opinion: Ovum, Dimension Data,

Esri, ADT, APC, BlackBerry, Converga, Spatial Vision 60 NBN Update

FEATURES 8 Unified communications

We explore how Microsoft's Lync unified-communications platform, a centre of gravity in the communications industry, is driving an industry that's finally beginning to live up to its long-held promise.

35 Human resources

The Queensland Health payrollsystem debacle refocused efforts on the importance of correct IT project management, but the real story in human resources lies in its ongoing transition to human capital management – and its potential benefits for government.

54 NBN Strategic Review

23 SECURITY / PRIVACY

DIGITAL GOVERNMENT CONFERENCE GUIDE

March 12 marks the introduction of strict new federal privacy guidelines that will impose consistent restrictions on the protection of personal information between private and public sectors. It's business as usual for some departments, and a big change for others; which will you be?

The Digital Government Conference 2014 will bring together key technology thought-leaders for two days of sharing, exploring and planning.

This pullout conference guide includes everything you need to know about the event.

From an ICT perspective, it's the most important document yet to come from the Abbott Government. But what does the NBN Strategic Review say, and how will it impact you?

CASE STUDIES 19 ac3

Government shared-service provider charts the way forward.

21 Gosford City Council

A telecommunications license is helping innovative Gosford City Council deliver on its e-government vision.

GTR JAN/FEB 2014 | 1

It's never easy when the ground rules of any endeavour change, but this is exactly what's happening as we adjust to the new normal that is life under the Abbott Government – while at the same time being buffeted by the residual changes of the previous government.

The looming introduction of the Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Act 2012, which will come into effect on March 12 with significant punitive damages for any breach by public or private-sector organisations, is one such change. Although privacy protection is nothing new for most agencies, the new requirements take the issue to new heights –and will demand equal rigour from ICT executives charged with enforcing the provisions.

In an ideal world, those controls would be easy to implement and enforce. In the real world, the new privacy regime will take considerable effort on the part of everybody in government – particularly given how full the transformation and integration agenda already is.

The push toward cloud computing, for one, continues on in its inexorable way and will be the major transformation trend during 2014: it's increasingly being seen as less about transformation and more about the 'new normal' of operations. So, too, will the push to transform back-end processes and deliver multi-channel customer service to make digital government easier and more accessible than ever.

This issue spans the lot, with features ranging from an exploration of the new privacy regime and the progress made towards cloud computing, to a look at the policy and technology-led transformation of the core human-resources function.

We also look at the latest in unified communications, the national broadband network, and case studies at two very different types of innovative government organisations.

Bundled in the middle of this issue is a guide to the Digital Government Conference 2014, which will include a range of innovative speakers sharing their experiences and tips for better government, through the use of technology and process. Within its pages, you'll find everything you need to know about the event.

Drop me a line during or after the event to let me know what you think, or what you'd like to see in what is set to be a growing number of GTR events through 2014.

I'd like to thank the many people that took the time to complete the GTR Readership Survey we ran late last year. Reader feedback is incredibly important for us, and we got some great guidance about what you enjoy about GTR, and what you would like to see improved.

I'd also like to congratulate the winner of the Apple iPad mini, Waneka Jannusch of Gladstone Regional Council. Congratulations Jannusch, and enjoy your new tablet!

There's no need to wait until the end of the year to provide your feedback, however; drop me a line at the address below any time you feel like sharing.

EDITOR David Braue e: editor@govtechreview.com.au NATIONAL SALES MANAGER Yuri Mamistvalov e: yuri@commstrat.com.au Tel: 03 8534 5008 ART DIRECTOR Annette Epifanidis e: annette@commstrat.com.au Tel: 03 8534 5030 DESIGN & PRODUCTION Nicholas Thorne CONTRIBUTORS Brad Howarth, Kelly Mills, Kevin Noonan MELBOURNE OFFICE Level 8, 574 St Kilda Rd. Melbourne Vic 3004 PO Box 6137, St Kilda Rd Central 8008 Phone: 03 8534 5000 Fax: 03 9530 8911 Government Technology Review is published by CommStrat ABN 31 008 434 802

www.commstrat.com.au All material in Government Technology Review is copyright.

Reproduction in whole or in part is not allowed without written permission from the Publisher.

To subscribe to GTR magazine phone: 03 8534 5009

David Braue, Editor E: editor@govtechreview.com.au

2 | GTR JAN/FEB 2014

email: subs@govtechreview.com.au or go to www.govtechreview.com.au/subscribe

As a government entity, the people of Australia entrust their personal information and identity with you.

What are you doing to protect that trust?

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Government innovation, collaboration makes Australia SAP's second most-important market

Defence re-signs Unisys for nationwide IT services Service provider Unisys will continue managing a range of devices, for some 100,000 end users at 460 sites across Australia, after the company secured a $52m contract extension with the Department of Defence.

The two-year extension will see Unisys providing IT support services including network security and infrastructure, server and desktop support across the department and its subsidiary Royal Australian Navy, Australian Army and Royal Australian Air Force.

The extension to the Unisys contract comes after five years in which the company has worked to standardise the Department of Defence's IT support processes nationally, refine its delivery processes and improve service to end users.

4 | GTR JAN/FEB 2014

Unisys has played a critical role in the Defence Next Generation Desktop program, under which the Department of Defence is dramatically overhauling its desktop environment to provide greater device independence, as well as deployment and user flexibility.

“We are delighted to continue our relationship with the Australian Department of Defence,” said Scott Whyman, vice president and general manager, Global Managed Services Asia Pacific for Unisys in a statement.

“Unisys has a highly skilled and trusted field service workforce with the national reach to meet Defence’s geographic IT support requirements across metropolitan, regional and remote locations.”

A strong culture of government innovation has made Australia's government the most strategically important market in the world for business-systems vendor SAP outside of the United States, the company's head of public-sector engagement has revealed.

Speaking recently to Government Technology Review, Mark White, head of public services and health with the software giant, said the innovative technology culture within Australia's government agencies had helped them stand out on a global basis.

“In all the places where we continue to play a major role, Australia is probably the second most important market for SAP from a public sector standpoint,” White said, “because of what we're doing in collaboration with the federal government here.”

Citing recent work by the Department of Human Services – which has allocated $102.2m to replace its legacy Cuba payments-management system with an SAP-based off-the-shelf environment by 2016 – White said the Australian capacity to deliver innovative e-government solutions was “tremendous”.

“Whether it's federal, state or local government, we have a very, very trusted relationship with those organisations,” he explained. “Because of that trusted relationship, we can have an open dialogue about those issues that are going to be coming in the future.

“We want to figure out how we co-innovate with them, and to think about problems coming ten to 15 years from now and to think about how we design solutions down the road.”

SAP's investments in capabilities such as the SuccessFactors human capital management (HCM) platform have helped it to facilitate the development of solutions to a range of problems that can then be extended around the world.

“Whatever we do in Australia, we can quickly replicate in other countries,” White said. “So, if we can continue to innovate and be ahead of the game in Australia, it will help all those other countries – and Australia could basically be the leader for SAP for the rest of the world.”

Online child-safety measures up for comment until 7 March The federal government will seek to expedite removal of harmful content from the likes of Facebook and Instagram by introducing a number of measures aimed at improving online safety for children – and is seeking comment on the measures through 7 March.

Reflecting policy objectives set out in its election Policy to Enhance Online Safety for Children (at bit.ly/1ocxdEn), the Department of Communications this month announced a call for public submissions on the evolving policies.

As outlined by the department, measures mooted within the policy include: • The establishment of a Children's e-Safety Commissioner, positioned as a single point of contact for online safety issues for industry, Australian children and those charged with their welfare.

The Commissioner will also take the lead across government in implementing policies to improve the safety of children online.

• Development of an effective complaints system, backed by legislation, to get harmful material taken down fast from large social media sites, and • Examining existing Commonwealth legislation to determine whether to create a new, simplified cyber-bullying offence.

“The clear policy intent of the Government is to have a single organisation which takes the lead in relation to online safety for children, allowing for greater efficiency and addressing duplication and overlap,” the report says, noting that there may be overlap between the Commissioner's responsibilities and other programs within other government agencies.

“It is a key objective that the Commissioner will maintain a high public profile to provide visible leadership on enhancing online safety for children.”

The policy document also explores the range of content measures to be taken, how they might be applied to Australian ando overseas-hosted materials, procedures for complaints handling, and more.

Download the document at bit.ly/1dNvRx5.

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In shadow of NSA, Obama calls for innovation and action The year 2014 “can be a breakthrough year for America”, US president Barack Obama has promised in his latest annual State of the Union address, a far-reaching update on the country's progress and direction that was delivered in the shadow of ongoing concerns about mass data collection by US government authorities.

Obama glossed over the National Security Agency's (NSA's) program of surveillance, which has been scraping and collecting massive volumes of data about telephone conversations, Internet usage and even mobile apps with the goal of proactively identifying potential terrorists.

“Here at home, we'll keep strengthening our defenses, and combat new threats like cyberattacks,” he said, noting that America “must move off a permanent war footing.”

“That's why, working with this Congress, I will reform our surveillance programs – because the vital work of our intelligence

community depends on public confidence, here and abroad, that the privacy of ordinary people is not being violated.”

The United States government's phone surveillance activities are legal, a recent ruling by a US appeals court has found in reversing an earlier ruling that the activities – exposed last year by ex-National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden – were unconstitutional.

The NSA, in a massive program of phone records collection and analysis, has been collecting billions of Americans' phone records to feed cross-matching engines designed to identify potential persons of interest in anti-terrorism and other investigations.

Its constitutionality has been fiercely debated in the country, but the latest ruling paves the way for continued surveillance that will be tempered with controls and transparency.

For example, the US government recently allowed technology companies like Apple, Facebook and Google to reveal more information about the requests it lodges with them for information about online individuals.

An official panel recently completed a review

of the NSA's surveillance program with over 40 recommendations to kerb and improve its activities.

“In a world of complex threats, our security and leadership depends on all elements of our power,” Obama said, “including strong and principled diplomacy....

We counter terrorism not just through intelligence and military action, but by remaining true to our Constitutional ideals, and setting an example for the rest of the world.”

Obama also spoke about the need for the government to encourage growth through innovation, which he urged congressional leaders to help support through favourable legislations and government programs: “We know that the nation that goes all-in on innovation today will own the global economy tomorrow,” Obama said. “This is an edge America cannot surrender.

“Federally-funded research helped lead to the ideas and inventions behind Google and smartphones,” he continued, pushing for greater governmental support for technology innovation and patent-reform legislation “that allows our businesses to stay focused on innovation, not costly, needless litigation.”

Gosford City Council becomes licensed telecommunications carrier NSW's Gosford City Council is beginning to count the benefits of its move to become a fully licensed telecommunications carrier – making it the first council in Australia to do so.

Approval from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), which manages telecommunications licensing within the country, came through in mid 2013 but it is only this year, with a number of remote-access initiatives and new applications coming online, that the council will begin seeing the benefits of the move.

The decision to invest the considerable time and financial resources in the ACMA licensing came as Gosford looked for a way to be able to deliver cloud-based virtual desktop and application services to workers no matter what device they were using.

6 | GTR JAN/FEB 2014

Poor commercial communications services in the area meant the council couldn't rely on private-sector operators to deliver the kind of reliability and performance it needed to support its own private-cloud investments, so Gosford took matters into its own hands.

“It's not a palatable commercial model for a traditional carrier to land data services into parts of the city where there's only a handful of users,” manager of Information Management & Technology Gregory Punshon told Government Technology Review.

“We can now engage contractors to put fibre into telecommunications providers' pits, and as a consequence our costing model is completely different.”

The initiative will also allow Gosford to more closely leverage off of the rollout of the national broadband network (NBN) in that

area, which was among the earliest sites to be earmarked for rollout of fast fibre-to-thepremise (FTTP) services.

Better control over the telecommunications platform will give the council better opportunities to extend its own private-cloud investment, with improved business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities that will ensure essential services aren't compromised during emergencies, or if a telecommunications provider loses its Internet connectivity.

“The aim isn't to be a provider of telecommunications or to grow a telecommunications empire,” Punshon said.

“It's to deliver the right blend of services so we can deliver what the city needs.”

For more about Gosford's cloud-computing and telecommunications rollout, turn to the indepth case study on page 21.

UK government standardises on open file formats The UK Government is moving to ensure document longevity and avoid cloud lock-in by forcing government departments to use the open document format (ODF) for creating and exchanging official content.

The proposal was published in late January, with the Cabinet Office accepting submissions through 26 February.

Contemplation of the use of open formats is being considered because “citizens, businesses and delivery partners, such as charities and voluntary groups, need to be able to interact with government officials, sharing and editing documents,” the document states.

“Users must not have coasts imposed upon them due to the format in which editable government information is shared or requested.”

Although the proposal recognises the looming change to cloud-based services where file formats are less important – and calls browser-based editing “the preferred

option for collaborating on published government information” – the proposal also notes that “documents formatted in office software are still prevalent amongst users of government information and the formats used by government should meet user needs.”

Specified requirements for the final format include support for Unicode 6.2; support for import of older formats; use of metadata; imports and exports to/from other applications; fonts and graphics that are reusable in other formats; and the creation of document templates.

The OpenDocument Format (ODF) v1.2 is proposed as an acceptable open standard that meets all of those criteria, with CSV (Comma Separated Values) used as a standard format for spreadsheet data, plain text for unstructured information, and HTML4.01 or higher used for browser-based editable text.

ODF is an OASIS and ISO/IEC international standard that builds on the OpenOffice.org XML-based document format, and includes files with extensions such as .odt for word processing documents, .ods for spreadsheets, .odp for presentations, .odb for databases, .odg for graphics, and .odf for representing mathematical formulae.

OpenDocument files can also contain subsidiary folders compressed together using the .ZIP file compression format.

The avoidance of vendor lock-in is another key element of the UK government's initiative, which notes that “it must be possible for documents being created or worked on in a cloud environment to be exported in at least one of the editable document formats proposed.”

The government is also considering the best standard for viewing and presentation of documents, and has noted in a separate proposal that the PDF/A-1 and PDF/A-2 standards offer the best, standards-based options – and that PDF 1.7 should be used “where more rich functionality is needed.”

“As technology progresses, government's production of information in formats traditionally associated with documents will become less important for users,” the proposal advises.

“Government services are being redesigned to make them more straightforward and easier to use by making them digital by default. This will diminish the use of traditional government document formatting even further as information is published directly on the web.

[But] documents should be accessible on different devices without loss of integrity. The information should not become spoiled.”

Unified Communications

NEW CHANNELS FULFILLING THE UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS DREAM IT MAY SOUND LIKE JUST ANOTHER FEATURE, BUT THE INTEGRATION OF NOW MICROSOFT-OWNED SKYPE WITH THE COMPANY'S LYNC 2013 UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS (UC) SERVER IS A SIGNIFICANT MILESTONE IN THE CONTINUING EXPANSION OF THE PANTHEON OF UC OFFERINGS. ● By David Braue

T

he bridge between the two applications, after all, represented the unification of the company's enterprise-focused UC environment with a consumer and business-grade voice and video communications network that is so ubiquitous that it long ago became a verb.

Taken together, the union will significantly expand the reach of existing and planned UC environments, extending the technology out of the enterprise and onto the Skype-laden computers, smartphones, tablets and dedicated phones with which employees have already likely been communicating for years.

Microsoft's industry stature has made Lync the centre of gravity for enterprise-focused UC solutions, with UC vendor Polycom recently releasing more than 40 different products that bolt onto the Lync environment. These include the CX8000 room system with its 360-degree

Phil Zammit

8 | GTR JAN/FEB 2014

cameras, desktop CX5100 Unified Conference Station, and more.

"Video is merging into that unified communications piece, where video enhances the collaborative experience," says Gary Denman, Polycom's ANZ managing director.

"We're seeing the transition to video in the corporate space and government agencies as well: if you've got the facility to interact with somebody and actually act questions and engage with them, people get much more from the conversation. And Lync is a very powerful driver of this: user adoption is the biggest accelerator driving that change."

The rapid rise of mobility has equally been a shot in the arm for UC, which showed its early promise as an adjunct to IP-based voice over IP (VoIP) services a decade ago but has become far more widely used as improved videoconferencing equipment, messaging interoperability, sharing of contact data and – most recently – the portability of UC apps onto smartphones, all combined to make it at once more functional and accessible.

This last capability has proved to be a boon for UC environments, which were always software-based but required proprietary hardware in their early days because they simply couldn't play nicely with legacy analogue systems.

"As the industry moves more towards a software-led environment versus it being a pureplay hardware discussion, that allows for integration into the business processes," says Denman.

Whereas session initiation protocol (SIP) support removed the proprietary nature of the UC equipment, the creation of SIP-based smartphone apps has removed it completely: employees can now extend their desktop UC environment to their smartphone using vendors' own UC apps.

UC vendors have been working to shift away from reliance on proprietary hardware at the other end of the UC environment, as well. ShoreTel, for one, recently offering a fully virtualised communications system that allows users to mix and match hardware-based and virtual appliances in a single network, with unified web-based management.

This change simplifies the adoption of the UC environment and improves overall performance and reliability by ensuring the UC capability dovetails with existing virtual-machine backup, recovery and management capabilities.

This interplay also boosts the scalability of the UC environment, quadrupling the number of ports that can be supported per appliance – up to 1000 phones and 500 SIP trunks.

“Virtualisation complements our distributed architecture and allows customers to benefit from virtualisation features and ShoreTel's inherent N+1 redundancy to deliver high availability at the lowest cost,” says vice president of project management Pej Roshan.

“Virtualisation sets the foundation for customers to consume VoIP services via on-premises, hybrid, and cloud deployment models.”

Getting unified With the technology of unified communications continuing to separate itself from the underlying hardware, existing users and potential new adopters are finally getting the tools to facilitate a broader deployment that – unlike the highly prescriptive technologies of the last decade – delivers UC on their terms.

In many cases, this is facilitating the delivery of new capabilities to contact centres, whose requirement for multi-channel communications long ago made them natural target markets for UC solutions.

These days, even those organisations without a formal contact centre will want to consider a similar approach when weighing up the possibilities of UC. “What's changing is the way in which the unified communications, contact centre and related technologies are being discussed for both internal and external purposes,” says Phillip Zammit, head of business development with BT Global Services.

The drivers for UC that were there 5 to 7 years ago – cost minimisation, increased speed of connection and so on – are still there, Zammit says: “But the injection of the multi-channel contact centre world into the UC world is bringing everything together in a single device based on what's best for the user.”

In most cases, what is best for the user involves smartphones.

“We're seeing a massive change around mobility and UC in that context,” Zammit explains. “With the addition of the mobility

piece into it, they have very significant and intelligent solutions wrapped into the device in their own right. That presents significant opportunities to really exploit the benefits and power of the technology.”

Just how those opportunities will materialise, however, is still somewhat up in the air – and that, far from being a weakness of UC as in the past, is among its greatest charm. The sky is the limit – at least, insofar as IT staff can get their leadership teams onboard to promote the extensive cultural change that's typically necessary to help a UC-enabled organisation make the most of the technology.

Government organisations with large customer-facing exposure continue to lead the way: Perth-based Western Power, for one, recently signed with BT Global Services to build a multi-channel Customer Experience Platform that uses cloud-based Avaya UC technologies to enable customer service improvements in a scalable and predictable way.

“A comprehensive and multichannel contact centre that can provide customers with an integrated experience is essential to our growing population,” Western Power customer service section head Ben Oxford said when the deal was announced.

The platform will eventually link Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites as well as Web chat, SMS, and fax routing – tying them all into a back-end environment enabled by UC technologies that now, unlike a decade ago, have more channels to unify than ever.

All signs are that Lync will continue to serve as the centre of gravity as government agencies

continue their march towards UC and all that it has to offer.

'That association of the Lync brand with UC has definitely accelerated its maturity," says Zammit. "That has driven its own expectation that this area is now comfortable and mature. The underlying reasoning behind this is that this is a good way to improve the way in which ratepayers, constituents and the public perceive the improvement of government customer service."

Gary Denman

GTR JAN/FEB 2014 | 9

Cloud

10 | GTR JAN/FEB 2014

ON FACE VALUE, CLOUD COMPUTING SHOULD BE A NO-BRAINER FOR GOVERNMENT AGENCIES KEEN TO KEEP COSTS DOWN AND GET OUT OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT BUSINESS. ● By Brad Howarth

T

o date, however, concerns regarding security and jurisdictional governance have combined with the naturally conservative nature of government agencies to leave them significantly lagging their commercial cousins in the uptake of cloud services.

Now 2014 looks set to be the year when public sector agencies finally embrace the cloud.

With pilot projects at a local and state level now bedded down and a federal policy for the digital economy and e-Government in place that puts the cloud first in the thinking of agencies, 2014 could be the year when Australian governments start migrating services to the cloud in earnest.

The shift in sentiment is proving to be good news for local cloud service providers, who stand to reap the benefits of government clients who will still want to keep their cloud implementations onshore.

Matt Healy, the national executive for industry and policy at Macquarie Telecom, says the turning point came with the announcement

of the previous government’s digital-first policy for government services.

“And that was turbo charged by the Coalition’s policy, which we need to recognise is one of the few detailed policies to be released prior to the election,” Healy says.

“This is like turning an oil tanker around – it is going to take time – but what we are pleased about is that there are some examples coming through of people getting good approvals for adoption. And the first of those are lining up behind them a whole lot of other departments that are going to follow in their wake.”

The Coalition policy added strength to the Australian Government Cloud Computing Policy v2.1 issued in mid-2013, with the emphasis moving from simply considering cloud services where they demonstrated value for money and adequate security, to a position where cloud services are to be considered as a first choice for new ICT procurements, including public cloud for test and development environments and for public-facing websites.

GTR JAN/FEB 2014 | 11

Cloud

The key is in the word ‘considered’, which encompasses a need for agencies to actively review the use of cloud services and to document any decision not to use cloud with a supporting argument.

A spokesperson for the Department of Finance said where non-sensitive information is involved, the Department encouraged the use of public cloud services, while a hybrid model, or private or community cloud, has been suggested as information or operational requirements dictate.

According to the spokesperson: “The recently released Coalition’s Policy for E-Government and the Digital Economy describes a more aggressive use of cloud computing and is anticipated to increase the adoption of cloud services across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors of the Australian economy. For example, it includes a requirement for an analysis and the establishment of a private government cloud.”

The Department of Finance has also released a non-mandatory multi-use list to further facilitate the procurement of cloud services and mitigate the cost and effort associated with procurement exercises.

FIRST STEPS The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) is one of the federal agencies to take its first tentative steps into the cloud, using Amazon Web Services to supplement its test and development capability.

A pilot commenced in March 2013 and concluded in September.

According to the department’s group manager for technology solutions, Susan Monkley, the purpose of the trial was to understand how it could take advantage of new service models. Business drivers included improving the department’s ability to rapidly provision IT infrastructure services to itself and supported agencies; reduce costs; increase capacity and align with government policy to maximise the value of cloud in government.

Monkley says the early signs are promising, with the department’s experience to date described as “extremely positive”.

“Whilst we are only in the early stages of migrating our test and development workloads into the public cloud, our modelling suggests that we can achieve cost reductions using the public cloud service,” she explains.

“Within broad parameters, we are able to facilitate increased capacity demands quite easily, especially for standard server, storage and database requirements.”

With the time taken to provision new services now reduced to minutes, the Department has had to investigate streamlining its own internal processes to accommodate fast provisioning.

Monkley says she sees significant advantages for the use of public/hybrid cloud for most workloads, particularly with test and development, .NET applications, SharePoint,

document archives, and temporary on-demand environments for performance testing or quality assurance.

“At this point in time we are concentrating on our test and development environment, but certainly see the use of public cloud extending for both production and pre-production workloads,” she says.

Monkley notes, however, that any use of public cloud by the department will be undertaken in accordance with Australian Government policies regarding sensitive or personal data, and must still align with its security risk management framework.

Activity such as that within the DEEWR are leading cloud providers from around the world to take notice: Healy says Macquarie is now receiving calls on a daily basis from foreigndomiciled SaaS providers that want to house their solutions in Australian data centres.

“They appreciate that on-shoring is an important issue to the Australian government,” he says.

THE CLOUD STATE State governments have also been moving to implement cloud policies, although their levels of maturity vary widely.

The NSW Government, for instance, has developed a Cloud Services Policy as part of its overall ICT Strategy, and requires NSW Government agencies to evaluate cloud-based services when undertaking ICT procurements to

The key is in the word ‘considered’, which encompasses a need for agencies to actively review the use of cloud services and to document any decision not to use cloud with a supporting argument.

12 | GTR JAN/FEB 2014

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The EducaIT webinar series & virtual expo summit will provide attendees with valuable insights into where the Australian Education system is today, and where it will be tomorrow in relation to mobile technology. Targeted at the mobility space the focus will be on getting school IT staff to share BKMs around school tablet, smartphone, and laptop rollouts (particularly BYOD) and how they dealt with the many issues those devices introduce. Managing mobility within the educational context – targeted at both IT managers in schools and their principals, so both the “business” and technical sides can get a better idea of what’s involved to get mobile devices working to meet both students’ and teachers’ needs. This unique event will specifically target Principals & IT Managers within all Australian Schools including Universities, TAFEs, Public & Private schools.

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With the Coalition’s Policy for E-Government and the Digital Economy in migrating all major government services online, and an increasing affinity for cloud-based services playing an increasing role in making this happen, the event provides vital information on ICT policy adoption and execution. The Summit will be an engaging online event for C-level executives and managers from the three tiers of government and the wider public sector, as well as private companies, whose work relates to the IT operating environment.

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Cloud

“It is important to note that Tourism WA does not look at a cloud solution as ‘just putting a system on the Internet anywhere around the globe’. Tourism WA considered in detail where the system and data would be held and what business continuity and disaster recovery measures were in place.”

14 | GTR JAN/FEB 2014

determine the ICT delivery model that provides the best-value sustainable investment.

Under the policy, whose development involved significant consultation across government and industry, agencies must undertake the evaluation in line with their business and service delivery priorities. A key purpose of the policy and guidelines is to bring together advice for agencies in managing their state records, privacy and information access obligations in a cloud delivery model.

Queensland, meanwhile, has set up a wholeof-government cloud infrastructure panel under the management of the Department of Science, IT, Innovation and the Arts (DSITIA), which will focus on public cloud services up to the operating system layer.

Western Australia is yet to formalise a cloud policy, although the WA Department

of Finance has produced a list of resources to assist agencies to perform a risk assessment and make an informed decision as to whether cloud computing is currently suitable to meet their business goals.

The lack of a clear policy in WA hasn’t stopped Brisbane-based software developer TechnologyOne from successfully in signing up three WA government agencies to the cloud version of its software, as part of a deal across 21 state departments and agencies.

One of the early adopters was Tourism WA, which went live on the TechnologyOne cloud solution in May 2013.

Chief information officer Dean Lockwood says Tourism WA opted to utilise a cloud-based software package as it represented the best value for money to meet its requirements.

He says Tourism WA believes it will gain many benefits from using a cloud-based solution, such as strong value for money, flexibility, handing off the overheads to an external service provider, and ensuring robust and reliable business continuity and disaster recovery measures.

Lockwood says the agency has already realised these benefits and expects to continue doing so in coming years.

And he says there were no concerns about using a cloud-based solution.

“All options were considered, and a cloudbased solution was the best overall fit for our requirements,” Lockwood says. “It is important to note that Tourism WA does not look at a cloud solution as ‘just putting a system on the Internet anywhere around the globe’.

“Tourism WA considered in detail where the system and data would be held and what business continuity and disaster recovery measures were in place.”

TechnologyOne’s founder and chief executive officer Adrian Di Marco says the pipeline for his company at the sate government level around Australia is strong.

“They seem to be looking at ways to really reduce their costs and get the efficiencies and they are very open to cloud-based solutions,” Di Marco says, adding that many discussions have been off the back of failed shared services initiatives.

Cloud COUNTING THE BENEFITS OF THE CLOUD Many organisations have held back on their cloud adoption strategies, but surveys are starting to show that the concept is increasingly being recognised as a driver for significant benefits.

KPMG International’s 2013 Global Cloud Survey (bit. ly/LLw9J9), for one, found that 32 percent of respondents strongly agreed that cloud environments were already delivering significant efficiencies and cost savings, while an additional 38 percent agreed. Just six percent of respondents disagreed.

More than half of the respondents to the KPMG survey were already working in the cloud, with organisations “beginning to recognise that cloud is much more than just another IT cost reduction lever,” the report’s authors noted.

“The IT function sees cloud as a strategy to run their business more efficiently by reducing costs and enhancing agility, two of the biggest challenges for most IT leaders....The results also suggest that business executives are starting to fully appreciate the potential transformative value that cloud can bring to the enterprise....Many are now starting to look deeper into their operating models to see how these advantages can be extended into the wider enterprise.”

There are still obstacles to the cloud’s adoption, however: a third of respondents said the implementation and integration

16 | GTR JAN/FEB 2014

costs were too high, while 31 percent named integration with existing architecture as a key obstacle and 26 percent said a lack of standards would hinder interoperability.

Privacy concerns were also prominent, named by 30 percent of respondents, while 26 percent cited a lack of visibility into future demand and 26 percent were concerned about general security risks.

Interestingly, security had been the area of most concern in KPMG’s earlier 2011 study. Its demotion in the latest results, therefore, reinforces the idea that organisations are becoming increasingly comfortable with the security implications of the cloud transition.

“Organisations are quickly gaining more confidence in the security of their cloud services providers,” KPMG writes. “Through our experience conducting dozens of cloud security reviews, we have found that – with few exceptions – leading service providers tend to have a very firm grasp on security.”

“In most cases, these providers offer robust and resilient security measures and controls that may enhance some companies’ security rather than diminish it....This movement to cloud will require IS leaders to start thinking and communicating about security in terms of how it impacts the business operations and the services they use, rather than the security of infrastructure such as servers and networks.” – David Braue

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Cloud

“One argument that is often used against change is that all of the systems are integrated, and reliant on each other, and it is difficult to isolate one part and put it in the cloud.”

Most discussion regarding the cloud have also been with small to medium organisations.

“But we are getting interest at the top end – there’s no doubt about it,” Di Marco says. “We’ve got some big organisations talking to us about the cloud, and some said they will commit in the next 12 months. So it is just a matter of timing.”

BABY STEPS AT LOCAL LEVEL TechnologyOne has also benefitted from increased interest in cloud computing at a local government level, signing up one council in Queensland with more prospects in active discussions.

Di Marco says he was surprised to have signed a local government so early in the life of TechnologyOne’s cloud-based software.

“We thought that would be a couple of years away, because they are complicated businesses,” Di Marco says. “So it has stretched us, but we are working with them, and it will prove the whole cloud concept even further that it is very doable for the most complex of businesses.”

Another local government to test out the cloud has been Ipswich City Council, which in July this year entered into a two year contract with Data#3 for the provision of off-site data storage in the cloud. The cloud computing contract was signed as an addendum to Council’s original contract with Data#3, and the available storage size can be increased or reduced if needed.

According to an Ipswich Council spokesperson, the council has used cloud computing in the past to store things such as its performance appraisal system, but it is now moving more and more of its data to the cloud.

“Only private clouds are used by council and stringent back-up and privacy procedures are in place to protect the integrity of all data stored,” the spokesperson said.

All servers containing corporate applications have already been migrated to the cloud with

18 | GTR JAN/FEB 2014

only a small number of servers left to be migrated off council hardware. The expected completion date is March 2014.

But apart from these examples, local government moves into the cloud have been tentative at best.

Tony Chadwick, cloud business adviser for the Broadband Today Alliance (a representative group of over 135 local governments around Australia), says he is only beginning to hear of councils considering the move to cloud over the traditional internally managed solutions.

“What we are finding, is that the typical council IT areas are risk adverse and have high levels of comfort with their existing environments,” Chadwick says. “One argument that is often used against change is that all of the systems are integrated, and reliant on each other, and it is difficult to isolate one part and put it in the cloud.”

But there may be another argument at play within local government that is retarding adoption of the cloud – and it has nothing to do with technology.

“Of the 560 odd local governments across Australia, most are very small and the teams looking after IT remain concerned that the transition to the cloud will potentially impact on their own jobs,” Chadwick says, “rather than seeing the need to transition to providing a knowledge-based information service rather than a managed box-based (infrastructure) service.”

Nonetheless, he says some councils have already adopted ‘hybrid’ or ‘private’ cloud computing services, typically in partnership with large ICT vendors and or service integrators as partners.

“The adoption of mass market ‘public’ cloud software-as-a-service platforms such as Google Apps and Gmail to replace legacy applications seems a bridge too far for local government IT departments at this point,” Chadwick says.

“But when one or two make the transition and begin to show improved bottom line results

and no sovereignty issues realised, it won’t take long for the tide to change. Precedent in local government is a key requirement for most. But somebody else has to go first.”

ASSESSING AUSTRALIA’S LOVE OF THE CLOUD Frost & Sullivan’s recent State of Cloud Computing in Australia Report 2013 found “strong take-up of cloud offerings” across the spectrum of Australian organisations, with IaaS and PaaS “particularly strong” as cost pressures and growing comfort with cloud models pushed organisations to explore new cloud models.

Among the findings of the research: - Over 60 percent of Australian organisations that are currently using cloud-based solutions plan to increase their cloud budget over the next 12 months.

- Only 2 percent of current cloud users plan to decrease their budgets.

- 31 percent of Australian organisations are likely to consider enlisting a cloud broker to be a single point of contact between various cloud vendors.

- 24 percent of organisations that currently don’t access storage via the cloud are likely to do so in the next 12 months, with Google Drive, DropBox and the like “very popular amongst smaller organisations.”

- 60 percent of Australian organisations feel cloud-based solutions have not fully met their expectations, with major concerns around the risks of a service outage.