Australian Department of Health & Aged Care embraces Google Cloud for data consolidation and innovation

The Australian Department of Health & Aged Care has embarked on a significant digital transformation journey by forming a strategic partnership with Google Cloud. This collaboration aims to consolidate the Department’s data assets, enhancing regulatory compliance, achieving cost savings, and facilitating faster innovation in the healthcare sector.

In a move that underscores the Department’s commitment to leveraging cutting-edge technology for improved healthcare services, Google Cloud was chosen after a rigorous competitive tendering process. Google Cloud’s selection was primarily due to its robust compliance and security measures, which include Certified Strategic Status for cloud services. Additionally, the platform’s implementation of zero-trust security, data sovereignty controls, and its prowess in analytics capabilities were decisive factors, alongside Google’s dedication to open standards.

The initial phase of this partnership will see the Department migrating its Hadoop workloads to Google Cloud Platform. Subsequently, it plans to unify a plethora of data assets from various internal sources into a single repository managed by BigQuery. This consolidation into BigQuery, which will become a central element of the Department’s new Enterprise Data and Analytics platform, is expected to result in significant cost reductions and a quicker time-to-market for deploying new features and meeting requirements.

Brian Senior, Director of Public Sector at Google Cloud for Australia & New Zealand, highlighted the potential of this consolidation effort. “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,” Senior stated, aligning with the Australian Government’s digital strategy priorities.

This partnership marks Google Cloud as a pivotal component of the Department’s multicloud strategy, enhancing its capacity to support an integrated multicloud environment. Furthermore, the collaboration is poised to foster a conducive ecosystem for digital innovation and skills development within Australia’s public sector.

In addition to infrastructure and analytics improvements, the Department will leverage Google Cloud’s commitment to open source technology in its workforce development strategy. Google Cloud is set to train up to 70 Department staff, aiming to enhance their proficiency with the analytics platform within four months. This initiative is expected to broaden career progression opportunities for public servants and improve the government’s ability to attract top talent, thanks to the transferable and widely available skills associated with open source environments.

The partnership with the Australian Department of Health & Aged Care extends Google Cloud’s track record of supporting the Australian public sector. It underscores Google Cloud’s role in aiding entities like Australia Post, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and the New South Wales Department of Customer Service in achieving regulatory compliance without hampering innovation and accessibility.