The Australian government is planning on establishing three ‘Cyber Hub’ pilots that will see departments such as Defence, Home Affairs, and Services Australia provide cyber services for the smaller ones.
The federal government might be finally letting go of its ” every agency for itself when it comes to cybersecurity ” mantra, signalling on Wednesday its intention to have Canberra’s bigger agencies provide support to others. “We know that certain agencies cannot compete for skills and resources in the marketplace and we must develop alternative ways for meeting their needs,” Minister for Employment, Workforce, Skills, Small and Family Business Stuart Robert said. The former Minister for Government Services revealed the government is looking to establish three “Cyber Hub” pilots that will see departments such as Defence, Home Affairs, and Services Australia provide cyber services for “those agencies that cannot match their breadth and depth of skills”. “We can see a future where such hub models may be established for other types of scalable services, not just cybersecurity,” he said. “This may include broader ICT functions — such as secure email, or corporate services — such as finance or HR.” The decisions will be informed by the Whole of Government Architecture and the Digital Review, which are both projects underway by the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA). The DTA, now back under the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and with the revised mandate to be responsible for “Whole of Government ICT governance, strategy, policy, architecture, processes, and procedures”, is going to provide Robert with a “complete picture of what we have, what we need, what we must invest in and by when” as part of the creation of the Whole of Government Architecture.
