The
Irish government has ended its Government Cloud Services Catalogue (GCSC) project. The project, which was initiated by Brendan Howlin, the country’s Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, cited technical and economic changes as the cause of the project’s cessation.
The initial purpose of the project, which was loosely similar to the UK government’s G-Cloud initiative and was 2 years into development, initially aimed to establish a core of pre-approved IT suppliers that government departments and ministries could engage for services like cloud-based security, email, payroll, records management and storage, and HR services. These services were also intended to be available to Ireland’s defense forces, its police, and its education and health sectors.
The project saw around 100 companies invest time and effort in vying for inclusion in the IT suppliers list.
A new ICT strategy has been established to replace GCSC. This includes development of a government cloud which can offer the Irish public sector common IT systems and infrastructure. While this has generally been applauded, some within the Irish government questioned the reasoning behind the termination of GCSC.
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