AGIMO issues govt cloud adoption guides

The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) has released three draft guides as part of the first stream of its Cloud Computing Strategic Directions Paper (PDF), examining privacy, legal and financial considerations for government agencies moving to the cloud.

(King Cloud image by Karen Ka Ying Wong,
CC BY-SA 2.0)

The three draft guides, Privacy and Cloud Computing for Australian Government Agencies (PDF), Negotiating the cloud — legal issues in cloud computing agreements (PDF), and Financial Considerations for Government use of Cloud Computing (PDF), each contain checklists for government agencies to follow if they are adopting cloud services.

While the draft privacy and legal guides cover aspects of privacy and security, the papers draw heavily on the Defence Signals Directorate's Cloud Computing Security Considerations (PDF).

The privacy and legal guides also draw on the Information Privacy Principles, which apply to government agencies and were developed by the then-Office of the Privacy Commissioner. These two guides also address record management requirements by referencing the National Archives of Australia's Records Management and the Cloud (PDF) checklist.

The financial considerations guide does not draw on previous work done by other government agencies, but covers capital management plans, financial assessment agencies that have considered moving to a cloud environment, financial risk and commercial principles that agencies should adopt.

The drafts are open for comment on AGIMO's blog, or via email, by 9 December.