The New Zealand government has scored a cloud agreement on behalf of agencies to use AWS.
The lead government ICT agency has secured one of Amazon Web Services' first all-of-government supplier agreements.
The Department of Internal Affairs( DIA) scored the pan-government deal to help agencies accelerate the adoption of public cloud services.
Agencies are not mandated to use the agreement, which covers services offered from AWS' Sydney datacentre, but DIA said it will save those who do time and resources through simplified contractual processes.
“This agreement is further recognition of New Zealand’s leadership in digital government,” said Government chief technology officer Tim Occleshaw. “It is a valuable addition to our portfolio of commercial arrangements with local and international suppliers.”
The cloud framework agreement leverages the scale of New Zealand government as a single customer and supports the Government’s Cloud First policy.
The Cloud First policy requires agencies to adopt cloud services in preference to traditional IT systems because, it says, they are more cost effective, agile, are generally more secure and provide greater choice.
The department has negotiated commercial agreements with other local and global cloud services providers on behalf of agencies and promises that buying cloud services will soon be easier through a Public Cloud ICT Marketplace planned for the second half of 2017.
According to DIA the agreement is one of the first all-of-government supplier agreements AWS has entered into globally.
Cloud services are currently available to agencies through the DIA's infrastructure as a service (IaaS) procurement panel from Datacom, Revera and IBM.
Datacom and Revera also provide public cloud compute and storage services through their reseller agreements with AWS and Microsoft Azure. According to the DIA's IaaS panel webpage the department is working with IBM to also provide public cloud services.
“This agreement supports agencies as they use public cloud services to enhance customer experience, streamline operations, and create new delivery models,” said Occleshaw.
“More broadly, it supports the creation of a digital ecosystem as we continue to reinvent the way citizens interact with government.”
