‘GOVCLOUD: the Queensland LG Experience’

Jock O’KeeffeDirector – Resolute Information Technology

• 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

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 have time to 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 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• 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?

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

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.

GOVCLOUD Menu

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

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

Some GOVCLOUD Customers

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

GOVCLOUD RSDS example• Goondiwindi Regional Council, located in South Western Queensland, about 350km

from Brisbane, population 12,000, centred around the town of Goondiwindi, regularly affected by weather events, occasionally severely.

• Council website, hosted by the council, is the key communication tool from council to community and for resilience reasons was moved to the cloud:

– 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– If the Council office is unusable, the Website is still fully functional

• Council email based on Exchange, is the primary form of communication between councillors, officers and other stakeholders, especially during disaster scenarios.

• Govcloud developed a fully synchronised back-up system in the cloud:– If the primary email system fails for any reason, the back-up system automatically takes

over– During previous flood events, power instability caused frequent downtime in the council

office and major interruptions to email traffic

Thank You for listening.

Questions?