Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Sinn Fein)
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194. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if the proposal for a shared Government data services centre as per the Recovery and Resilience Fund will be publicly run and not contracted out to a private provider. [36239/21]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The proposed new Government Data Centre will be a purpose-built facility owned and operated by Government. It will be built on state land and will be operated and managed by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine on behalf of the state.

The new Government Data Centre will be developed at the Government’s Backweston Laboratory Campus in Celbridge, Co. Kildare, which currently comprises various facilities for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the State Laboratory.

This project is part of the Government’s ICT strategy which is focused on creating ICT shared services to support integration across the wider public service in order to drive efficiency, standardisation, consolidation, reduction in duplication and cost control. The Data Centre will provide the foundation and platform on which our digital reforms and transformations will be built.

The objective of the Government Data Centre is to deliver high-quality Data Centre facilities which are fit for purpose and are capable of meeting the Government’s requirements now and in the future. In doing so it will support and enable the Civil Service Renewal 2030 Strategy, the Public Service Data Strategy and the Government’s 2021 Digital Strategy and thereby provide a much better experience of Government Services for the people of Ireland.