The Liberal Government has taken an important first step in delivering on our commitment to move whole-of-government data to the Tasmanian Cloud. We took to the election a four-year goal of moving to secure, on-island sovereignty arrangements, where critical public sector data is stored within Tasmania.
This is about a one-Government approach to service delivery. By moving to the Tasmanian Cloud, we would see benefits across Government departments:
• In education, teachers and students would be able to access learning resources regardless of their location;
• In justice, judges, prosecutors, defence counsel and court staff would have access to shared resources while they are in court;
• In child services, staff from multiple agencies including health, justice, education and police can access each other’s networks to manage client caseloads; and
• In police, officers will be able to securely access applications and services at any time and location.
Our Plan is for Government staff to have secure and controlled access anywhere, anytime, to the ICT services which they need to do their jobs.
The move to the Tasmanian Cloud would also improve data security and reduce the cost of data traffic on the Bass Strait link, as well as secure local jobs.
The Liberal Government wants to have a conversation with Tasmanian and national ICT firms about what future data requirements we need for the Tasmanian Cloud and how those requirements can best be met.
That conversation starts today with the release of a pre-tender consultation paper.
This paper sets out the current situation and what we need in the future. We want ICT firms to look at this paper and tell us what we can accomplish because it’s only by working with the ICT sector that we will achieve our vision for the Tasmanian Cloud.
The Liberal Government is working to grow our ICT sector and build a connected and empowered Tasmanian economy to drive economic growth and create jobs.
We remain in discussions with SubPartners about the APX-Central proposal and fibre spur to Tasmania which, while being mindful of the $1.1 billion black hole Labor left in the Budget, would be significant infrastructure for Tasmania with potential wide-ranging benefits.
The Government is thoroughly investigating the costs and opportunities and we will be in a position to make an informed decision about our involvement in the project over the coming months.
