Response to our recommendations about infrastructure as a service

30 May 2023: We asked Te Tari Taiwhenua | Department of Internal Affairs for an update on its response to recommendations we made in 2018 about Infrastructure as a Service.

We requested this update because we want to provide public transparency on progress with addressing our recommendations.

Photo used in our 2018 reportIn 2018, our report Infrastructure as a Service: Are the benefits being achieved? looked at whether the Government Chief Information Office (GCIO, now Te Kōtui Whitiwhiti | Digital Public Service) was adequately monitoring and reporting Infrastructure as a Service’s progress towards achieving its expected benefits.

Organisations using Infrastructure as a Service, ICT providers, and the GCIO told us that Infrastructure as a Service was worthwhile and meeting expectations. Organisations were generally satisfied with their provider’s performance in delivering the agreed services and levels of service under their contract. However, only about one quarter of the organisations that could use Infrastructure as a Service were using it.

An independent review in 2016 had found that there had been measurable financial benefits from the more than 20 shared ICT services that the GCIO managed, including Infrastructure as a Service. However, the GCIO did not measure the other benefits realised from using Infrastructure as a Service.

We considered that, as the functional lead for public sector ICT, the GCIO could monitor and report opportunities and risks for ICT infrastructure and proactively support organisations to move from traditional ICT models to “as a service” models. This could include sharing the experiences of those organisations already using Infrastructure as a Service to help other organisations understand the benefits of Infrastructure as a Service, such as helping to provide easy access to public services online.

We recommended that the Government Chief Information Office work with public organisations to:

  • agree a set of measures for all of its shared information and communications technology services, including Infrastructure as a Service; and
  • use these measures to consistently monitor the effectiveness and efficiency of the services and report information about their benefits.

Read what the Department of Internal Affairs has said about its progress with those recommendations:

We have not audited the information in this update.

At this stage, we do not plan to carry out any further performance audit work to follow up on our 2018 report. Our Sector Manager and Appointed Auditor will continue to seek further updates from the Department of Internal Affairs as part of their usual engagement.