Ends reliance on state government data centres
Service NSW has relocated the last workloads from the state government’s data center. It now operates all digital products 100% in the public cloud.
NSW’s one-stop-shop for government services began using its digital products entirely through Amazon Web Services last month.
It comes as part of a broader push to make public cloud the default in the public sector, in line with the government’s latest cloud policy.
Channel Engagement Director Suneetha Bodduluri revealed that Service NSW reached a milestone last month, more than three years after the agency sent its first assignments to AWS.
“Two years ago, when I joined Service NSW, they were in a hybrid model – 50/50 data center and the cloud,” she said during a panel session at the 2021 digital.nsw showcase.
“As of this week, we have virtually every single copy in [our] data center. We are now 100 percent cloud.”
A spokesperson confirmed with Tech Business News that all digital products, such as the COVID-Safe check-in tool available through the Service NSW app, now work 100% on AWS.
“This will improve the availability of core services to customers, while also enabling Service NSW to apply industry best security practices to protect data and systems,” the spokesperson said.
Service NSW pushed its first production workloads to AWS for the government’s Toll Relief Program, launched in July 2018.
Since then, the company has been moving as many on-premises workloads to the cloud as part of a multi-year migration project.
Bodduluri said “the whole team is very pleased” since the transition to the cloud, especially autoscaling, which has resulted in more resilient and accessible systems.
With the pandemic and public health orders mandating QR code check-in at retail and hospitality establishments, she said the demand for service NSW services “has grown to 85 percent.”
“If I look at the number of customers who used our mobile app before Covid, I would probably see 100,000 check-ins one day, but now I see 12 to 14 million check-ins a day,” added Bodduluri.
Under the government’s cloud policy, which took effect last October, all agencies are now required to “use public cloud services by default.”
It is expected that GovDC and other private clouds at the secure layer through the zone colocation services panel of the three newly created security policy frameworks will only be used in the “exception”.
By 2023, at least 25 percent of ICT services are to be based on the public cloud, compared to 17 percent currently.
The government estimates that 95 percent of large future IT infrastructure investments will be in the public cloud and less than five percent will require exemptions from the cloud policy.
AWS is used in Service NSW along with a number of other cloud services, including Salesforce and Microsoft 365.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and widely adopted cloud platform. In Australia and New Zealand, thousands of public sector clients from government, education, non-profits, and healthcare use AWS to innovate, evolve, and solve citizen challenges.
