Govt signs $45.6m datacentre deal

The Department of Finance and Deregulation has signed a 10-year $45.6 million dollar lease for datacentre facilities from Canberra Data Centres to be used by a consortium of federal government agencies.

This is the first lease to be signed through the government's whole-of-government Data Centre Facilities Panel that was set up early last year.

The agencies to be using the datacentre facilities in Hume were not named for security reasons. AGIMO said that it was looking to forge further consortium leases through the panel.

The move to whole-of-government datacentre sourcing was initiated by the Gershon review, which found that $1 billion could be saved by coordinating datacentre spending.

Most federal agencies are required to go through the panel, but state government agencies and exempted federal government organisations such as the Civil Aviation and Safety Authority are also entitled to make use of it if they wish. Agencies with existing agreements are only required to got through the panel when those agreements expire, or when significant changes to the agreement are necessary.

An interim panel was put into place for agencies that had an immediate need in 2010. Other agencies, whose procurement process started prior to the establishment of the interim panel (such as the Department of Defence) have been able to request exemption.