Transition to Cloud
As part of its regulatory obligations and operational requirements, the Department of Health and Aged Care (the Department) receives, stores and utilises massive amounts of data from disparate public and private sources across Australia.
Client
Department of Health and Aged Care
Category
Strategy and Architecture
Sub-Categories
Strategy and Planning
Advice and Guidance
Description of Services
The use of Department of Health and Aged Care data is essential to the delivery of crucial health related services and compliance functions to the Australian public, including (but not limited to):
- Access to subsidised prescription medicines through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).
- Access to medical services though the Medical Benefits Schedule (MBS).
- Access to Aged Care services, including the regulatory and compliance functions of the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (ACQSC).
One of the Aventious Solution Architects possesses extensive experience and has been heavily involved in several major IT projects across various federal government portfolios, where he has driven the design and implementation of new IT systems, including business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities.
He was engaged as the lead Solution Architect on a large and complicated project with the Department relevant to the transition of a key analytics platform from on-premise to cloud (AWS). As referenced above, the platform provides the foundation for the vast majority of the data and analytical capability which the Department relies upon.
As part of the transition and in partnership with various stakeholders (business areas, Senior Executive Staff (SES), commercial delivery partners), amongst other things, he was responsible for the development, consultation, and delivery of a high availability and disaster recovery plan
to:
- Mitigate the loss of critical IT resources including hardware, data, and physical IT assets.
- Minimise any downtime relating to IT.
- Ensure continuity of critical operations in the event of a disaster as not adversely impact operational areas reliant on the platform and the services it provides.
In addition to the role of engaging with the various stakeholders throughout the design and implementation of the cloud-based solution itself, he worked closely and intensely with the key business users to perform a thorough and informed business impact analysis and risk assessment. The delivery of this output considered the sustainability and continuity elements of the end solution. To inform this, the following activities were undertaken:
- Creation of an accurate list of applications and data required to support business-critical functions within the platform.
- Define the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) to ensure acceptable levels of impact across various business areas were considered in the event of a disaster.
- Identify and document the various possible scenarios which may result in a disaster (e.g., natural disasters, failure of equipment such as servers, power outages, network connectivity issues, cyber-attacks).
- Agree on Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with various stakeholders including business users, vendors, and service providers external to the Department.
Having considered the outcomes of the planning outlined above, the end solution was then designed to ensure it could meet the required RTO and
RPO whilst adhering to other Enterprise Architecture and Information Management patterns and governance requirements.
He played a key role as to the documentation and consultation of options (having considered the above planning outcomes) regarding financial impacts and value-for-money considerations.
The RTO requirements were evaluated by the respective delivery stakeholders and considered against the cost implications of various options available. He played an integral role as part of this process, ensuring the facilitation of the required consultations addressed the factors which would enable a considered decision.
As a result of the above, a decision was made to pursue a cold standby backup platform possessing a second availability zone to ensure that it could be restored within hours in case of a disaster. Backups of all data were designed to occur every four hours to a second availability zone in the dedicated Amazon Web Service (AWS) instance which satisfied the RTO and RPO requirements documented.
The disaster recovery plan has since been fully implemented and is now operational.