​Australian Defence College moves to the cloud with Google Apps pilot

The Australian Defence College (ADC) is piloting Google Apps as part of plans to move two of its flagship centres into the cloud.

Minister for Defence Marise Payne said there are plans to move ADC's Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies and the Australian Command and Staff College to a cloud-based platform for unclassified academic material.

She added this move will increase the ability for students to collaborate on joint tasks, while accessing material at their convenience.

Google Apps will replace the ADC's existing Open Student Network, which Payne said would require substantial and costly remediation in the future.

Payne said Defence is one of the first Australian government departments to roll out Google Apps.

"Defence selected Google Apps following a detailed evaluation of market offerings. This is a proven platform that is already used by sections of the US Military, UK Government and a number of Australian universities," she said.

Google Apps is scheduled to be rolled out by the end of the month, following consultation with relevant government agencies to ensure security and privacy issues will be managed according to policy requirements.

Following the pilot, Defence said it will evaluate the pilot program to determine if it can be adopted across other unclassified environments.

For the last two years, the federal government as a whole has been taking steps to implementing cloud technology, including moving the Australia.gov.au and Finance.gov.au into the public cloud, and establishing a cloud services panel to provide agencies access to cloud services.