The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has released a new tool to help Agencies understand their compliance obligations when moving to the cloud.
In a statement, DTA said the Cloud Assessment Tool, or CAT, tackled frequently asked questions about data classification, privacy, off-shoring, procurement of cloud services etc.
“Also included in the CAT are answers to questions that are not about compliance, but which could help guide Agencies towards good solutions,” the Agency said.
“They cover things like whether the service has transparent pricing, is elastic and automatable or allows Agencies to pay only for what they use.”
It said Agencies had struggled to understand their compliance obligations.
“This was raised as an obstacle to their adoption of cloud, so we included it in our strategy,” DTA said.
“We did a lot of user research to understand the problem, including one-on-one sessions with compliance experts.
“After a lot of prototyping and iterating, the evidence suggested that an assessment tool would be the most effective solution.”
The Agency said the CAT was not intended to provide an authoritative answer about whether to use a cloud service with questions in the tool meant to spark a discussion with stakeholders, owners of risk, and decision-makers within an Agency.
“The journey of answering the questions is just as important as the final result,” it said.
“We developed the CAT using the Australian Government Design System, which helped us easily create a service that’s consistent with other Government websites, and which is accessible by default.”
DTA’s new Cloud Assessment Tool can be accessed at this PS News link.
