28/02/2023 
Shane Gibson 
[FYI request #21681 email] 
Tēnā koe Shane 
OIA: 1303624 – Cloud infrastructure spend 
Thank you for your email of 31 January 2023 to the Ministry of Education (the Ministry) requesting 
the following information 
•  Please provide details of your total spend on cloud infrastructure over the last 5 years. 
•  Please break the costs down by financial year. 
•  Please break the costs down by cloud provider. 
•  Please limit it to the following cloud providers: 
-  AWS 
-  Azure 
-  Catalyst Cloud 
-  Google Cloud 
Your request has been considered under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act).  
Due to the Ministry having so few contracts for cloud infrastructure, I am withholding the requested 
information in full under section 9(2)(j) of the Act, to enable a Minister of the Crown or any public 
service agency or organisation holding the information to carry on, without prejudice or 
disadvantage, negotiations (including commercial and industrial negotiations).  
The Ministry has contractual obligations with our vendors to protect commercially sensitive 
information. If we were to divulge our total spend, it would allow competitors to deduce the 
amounts spent on each vendor individually. Releasing such information is likely to prejudice the 
commercial positions of our vendors, as making their rates public could lead to undercutting by 
their competitors. 
However, I can advise that the Ministry regularly publishes its ICT spend/budgets in the Annual 
Report. You can find copies of previous Annual Reports via the following link: 
education.govt.nz/our-work/publications/annual-report/. 
As required under section 9(1) of the Act, I have considered the public interest in releasing the 
withheld information; I do not consider the public interest considerations favouring the release of 
this information are sufficient to outweigh the need to withhold it at this time. 
Wellington National Office, 1 The Terrace, Levels 5 to 14, Wellington 6011 
PO Box 1666, Wellington 6140, DX SR51201 Phone: +64 4 463 8000  

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Thank you again for your email. You have the right to ask an Ombudsman to review my decision 
on your request, in accordance with section 28 of the Act. You can do this by writing to 
[email address] or to Office of the Ombudsman, PO Box 10152, Wellington 6143. 
Nāku, nā 
 
 
 
 
Stuart Wakefield 
Chief Digital Officer 
Te Puna Hanganga, Matihiko | Infrastructure and Digital 
 
 

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