With a renewed agreement to enable agencies in some of its largest clusters to transition to the public cloud, the NSW government has extended its partnership with Microsoft for another five years.
The new arrangement, which was made public on Wednesday, would, according to Microsoft, "help the NSW government through collaboration, security, communications, and data analytics, as well as modernizing services using the Microsoft cloud."
Under the agreement, 25 organizations—including public safety volunteers—from the departments of Health, Transport, and Justice, representing almost 400,000 users, will get support.
According to Microsoft, the grounds for the relationship were laid by the government's "commitment to strengthening its cyber security posture and shifting 25% of its ICT services to the public cloud by 2023."
According to Greg Wells, chief information and digital officer for the NSW government, the new deal would improve public workers' technological skills through a "comprehensive skilling and investment program."
The arrangement is also anticipated to enable "participation from SME and sovereign providers to the NSW government" and to offer "improved security, customer data safeguards, and privacy services," most likely using Microsoft Azure.
Since the pandemic has brought these requirements to light more than ever, Wells added, "we look forward to building on the government and Microsoft cooperation to further improve public services."
Although the exact date of the renewed partnership's signing is unknown, Microsoft said that it has already led to the creation of a number of new initiatives, including one spearheaded by KPMG to update the Department of Communities and Justice's outdated payment and contracting system.
The new system will be built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform and will be used to manage the contracting and funding of 1800+ service providers working on various programs.
Microsoft reported that Local Land Services is leveraging Dataverse and Power apps to enhance its reporting processes, while Dams Safety NSW is working to transition Microsoft SharePoint workflows used for auditing, compliance, and water management to the Power Platform.
