http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4732714a28.html By TOM PULLAR-STRECKER The Dominion Post 20 October 2008 Government agencies should weigh up the risks to security and New Zealand's wider economic interests before outsourcing IT systems overseas, says the State Services Commission. The commission has been developing guidelines for agencies considering "offshoring" information processing for 18 months. An IT industry executive at one multinational says the upshot is that while departments could send processing overseas, it would probably be easier for them to "pass their datacentres through the eye of a needle". Commission spokesman Jason Ryan says the advice stresses the dangers of offshoring, but also sets out how they could be managed. "That was the intention - to make people well aware of what the risks were and how they could think about mitigating them." The biggest supplier of IT services to the Government, EDS New Zealand, now a division of Hewlett-Packard, says the framework gives agencies a tool to weigh up the risks. "In the business world, it is accepted that sending work offshore can provide an opportunity to improve service delivery and reduce costs." But the commission says agencies should create a risk report and look at the "worst case scenario". Risks include industrial espionage, "intelligence-gathering by foreign governments" and the difficulty of enforcing privacy and legal rights in overseas jurisdictions. [...] __________________________________________________ Register now for HITBSecConf2008 - Malaysia! With a new triple-track conference featuring 4 keynote speakers and over 35 international experts, this is the largest network security event in Asia and the Middle East! http://conference.hackinthebox.org/hitbsecconf2008kl/Received on Wed Oct 22 2008 - 03:02:52 PDT
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