Human Services diced with cloud collaboration

The Department of Human Services dabbled in cloud collaboration and considered cloud-based email services, according to minutes from the Government's internalCloud Information Community (CLIC).

The minutes,released to iTnews under freedom of information, reveal the Government's formative steps to understand the cloud, including several trials, negotiations and projects.

A Department of Human Services (DHS) spokesman confirmed the agency undertook a five-week trial ofHuddle, a collaboration tool that bills itself as a SharePoint alternative.

Huddle is a US-based service with servers located in the United States.

A DHS spokesman told iTnews thatno classified or protected information was shared or discussed over Huddle, and that the department's IT security team "provided specialist advice and participated in a risk assessment before the trial started".

The trial encompassed 60 staff and ran between July 5 and August 6, 2010, at a cost of $3000.

Staff used the platform to share ideas and unclassified information about how human resource roles and functions could be structured in the lead up to Centrelink, Medicare Australia, Child Support Agency and CRS Australia integrating to form the Department of Human Services.

The DHS spokesman told iTnews that the trial was "valuable", though it appeared much of the value derived was cultural.

"Some participants cited busy workloads and lack of understanding and confidence in using social media at work as reasons for their low level of [Huddle] activity over the five weeks," the spokesman said, summarising a post-trial evaluation.

"The department has used the learnings from the trial to develop training materials for staff on how to use social media at work."

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Human Services diced with cloud collaboration