‘GOVCLOUD: the Queensland LG Experience’

Jock O’KeeffeDirector – Govcloud, and

Director – Resolute Information Technology

The “Cloud First” Policy – US GSA“In federal government alone we spend $US80 billion a year on IT and one of the most frustrating issues was to actually see project after project fail because it was based on the old IT model; we cannot continue on that path in this tough fiscal environment that we're in. That is why we, as part of the administration, instituted a "cloud first" policy.Vikek Kundra, CIO U.S.A. Federal Government, 2010

“The General Services Administration has shaved IT costs 50 per cent on new projects by moving to a cloud model”.Vikek Kundra, CIO U.S.A. Federal Government, 2012

Cloud?

Cloud• is the use of computing resources

i.e. hardware and software which that are delivered as a service over a network or the Internet.

• relies on sharing of resources to achieve economies of scale in the same way as utilities like gas and electricity.

• is a special case of the broader concept of converged infrastructure and shared services.

Cloud in Local Government • cost pressures mounting as old

systems need replacement and new IT systems grow more complex, meaning more expensive employees and more extensive vendor ‘partnering’

• vertical sectors like LG have natural affinity to share infrastructure because the broad commonality of processes and required outputs mean that shared resources can deliver equivalent results with lower resource usage

Council Feedback – What’s good about Cloud

From our customers …• Cloud provider expertise

reduces problems, downtime and frustration

• Deployment of new IT capacity is faster and has fewer problems

• Overall, costs are lower• Less time spent on fixing

and more on doing• We can do new things

From Ovum Research …“The benefits of cloud services range much further than just the ability to provide lower-cost services. Indeed, based on feed back from agencies with hands-on experience of using cloud services, the main benefits are that cloud services are a better and faster way to drive innovation, not just a less expensive way to source ICT. The cloud innovation edge offers all levels of government, local, state, and federal, an alternative strategic path forward to address their innovation/efficiency dilemmas.”

“ICT provides an acceptable service in terms of operating the Council’s networks and existing corporate applications. Overall however, ICT fails to satisfy user departments who have become increasingly frustrated with ICT’s unwillingness and/or inability to meet their changing needs.” Queensland Regional City ICT Review, July 2012

What is not good about Cloud

Sovereignty and Legal Risks• Data location and retrieval• Legal and regulatory• Service Level Agreements• Procurement practices• Vendor lock-in

Security risks• Privacy• Security

• US Patriot Act• Information and Privacy Principles• Availability

Operational Risks• Application design• Network architecture• Business continuity• Provider failure risk• Skills Requirements• Legacy integration• De-commissioning• Can I get my data in and out freely?

How could LG do Cloud?

Do Nothing• Rely on vendors to bring usable

Cloud options to Local Government• Allow State Governments to run

with the ball

Each go our own way• Each council develops a private

cloud

Adopt a collaborative sector approach

• Active collaboration where it suits• Look for and exploit commonality

Do Nothing • Competing clouds• Diminished influence and control

Each go our own way • Many clouds• Little or no cost benefit• Rich get richer

Adopt a collaborative sector approach

• Not perfect but many councils will achieve savings and other positives

• Many aggregation possibilities in sourcing and deploying solutions

• Information Technology Services for Local Government

• Individual solutions, shared costs, shared risks

• IT infrastructure and services available to all Councils

• World-class services

What is GOVCLOUD?

• LGAQ members have wanted more help by way of services and so the Customer Service Cluster has been developed over time.

• LGAQ has, and is, investing in major expansion of capability to meet council expectations

• Partners with skills, resources and common ambitions have been recruited to help facilitate services

LGAQ Council Service Cluster

PROPELProcess

Transformation &Shared Services

GOVCLOUDCloud Services &IT Infrastructure

RESOLUTEManaged IT/Telco

Services &Applications

GOVCLOUD Strategy - NOT Field of Dreams

• Start small and grow as council demand dictates

• Based on a safe, secure and very low risk platform

• Provide solutions to common processes, (‘common’ meaning ‘used by most councils’):– Backup and Storage– Email and apps– Servers, hosting, DR

• Provide real value to councils

Why Telstra?

Looking for a partner• Cloud infrastructure requires high

level skills and the best people flock to majors and away from minors

• Base level infrastructure is a scale game and we could not compete with major providers – our best buy price for 10 racks of servers was 30+% more than AWS’ sell price to market

• All the data shows that the really big guys are squeezing out the next tier, so we needed a major player

• Our partner had to be Australian based because of data sovereignty issues

Telstra Scale – multiple, industrial-strength

data centres in 4 states plus ACT Diversity – the best available

offerings for redundancy in pathing, hot and warm sites, failover etc

Offerings – complete range of platform services on which we can build value-added services

Experience – Australia’s largest hosting provider to government

Ambitions – $1b expansion in network computing/cloud infrastructure and services

GOVCLOUD Menu

Available Today• Hosted/Backup email• Infrastructure • Website hosting• Backup as a Service• Storage, Archiving• Application Hosting• Disaster Recovery• Digital Docs

In Development Conferencing Collaboration portals CRM Open Data Platforms Disaster Management Webcasting Payroll, HR, Finance Asset Management

What does GOVCLOUD do?

Capabilities• Matching council needs to

available cloud solutions• Managing the infrastructure

and suppliers• Finding applicable solutions

and commissioning• Service delivery

Operations• Order and delivery

administration• IT consulting for scoping,

designs, implementations, process conversions, data migrations, etc.

• Ongoing support• Account management for

customer relationships, problem solving, escalations, solution scoping, etc.

Some GOVCLOUD Customers

GOVCLOUD example• Burdekin Shire, located in North Queensland, about an hour south of Townsville,

population 18,000, centred around Ayr, regularly affected by weather events, occasionally severely.

• Council website, hosted by the council, is the key communication tool from council to community. Decided last year that they should have a back-up site in case of unavailability for any reason. Going off-site to Cloud was not a unanimous decision!

• GOVCLOUD ran a project to create a ‘mirror’ site in the cloud to achieve this. Seamless transition – council officers and the public were not able to tell which site was which.

• So successful that council has now decided that the GOVCLOUD site will become the primary site:

– Backed-up correctly every day without the regular issues at council– Frees up local server capacity for other projects– Low cost with high efficiency– Council does now not need massive bandwidth to cope with traffic spikes

GOVCLOUD RSDSRedundant Solutions for Disaster Scenarios

RSDS provides a scalable, flexible and cost efficient service which allows council to store and control data from remote locations ensuring continued communication, operation and management of all council business even during a highly destructive emergency or hazard.

Infrastructure as a Service - Disaster Recovery- Backup as a Service- Websites

Software as a Service- Hosted Disaster Hub- Backup Email- Wildfire application- Guardian Disaster Management

RSDS Outcomes

- Reduced community vulnerability

- Uninterrupted communications

- Better business continuity process

- Improved community satisfaction

- Reduced harm to people and assets

- Reduced pressure on other services

With Some Positive Outcomes

The General Services Administration (GSA) was fully operational throughout Hurricane Sandy due to its strong infrastructure. Casey Colemen, CIO of the GSA, stated that all users remained online and functional throughout, even with an interruption due to a Verizon outage in New York.

Paul Fendley, of Toowoomba Regional Council stated: “In local government we are always looking for opportunities to further improve service delivery for our communities, particularly where there are economies of scale with other levels of government. We have enjoyed working with the LGAQ and GovCloud in being part of this innovative project benefitting the Toowoomba Region with increased ICT resilience”.(The Australian 2012)

Some resilience successes …

Thank You for listening.

Questions?