After a competitive tender process, the Australian Department of Health and Aged Care has selected Google Cloud to consolidate its data assets for greater regulatory compliance, cost savings, and faster innovation. The rationalisation of data assets on Google Cloud is expected to yield substantial savings and efficiencies.
The Department selected Google Cloud for its strong compliance and security credentials, platform-level implementation of zero-trust security, data sovereignty controls, commitment to open standards, and the speed and scalability of its analytic capabilities. Google Cloud holds the Australian Government Certified Strategic Status for cloud services.
The initial plan is to migrate the Department's Hadoop workloads to Google Cloud before unifying data assets from a range of internal sources on a single repository managed by BigQuery. This first project expects to achieve major cost savings and faster time-to-market for new requirements and features.
BigQuery will continue to be a core part of the Department's new enterprise data and analytics platform, while Google Cloud acts as a pillar of the Department's multi-cloud strategy.
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“Consolidating the Department's data and analytics capabilities has the potential to generate substantial savings while further bolstering compliance and security across sensitive national healthcare data — both key themes for the Australian Government’s long-term digital strategy,” said Google Cloud ANZ senior director public sector Brian Senior. “We’re delighted the Department of Health & Aged Care has selected Google Cloud to help govern and secure citizens’ personal data against increasingly sophisticated threats, while also creating a more conducive environment for digital innovation and skills development within Australia’s public sector.”
Additionally, Google Cloud will train up to 70 department staff to take full advantage of the analytics platform within four months.
“The skills required for open source environments like Google Cloud’s are both more widely available and transferrable, expanding the career progression opportunities for public servants and improving government agencies’ ability to attract top talent,” Senior said.
The partnership builds on Google Cloud’s existing track record in helping the Australian public sector achieve regulatory compliance without compromising innovation and accessibility, including work with Australia Post, CSIRO, and the NSW Department of Customer Service.