Lid lifted on secret building
$300m data centre under construction at Whenuapai air force base
The Government has been secretly building a $300 million data centre at an air force base in Auckland since early last year, to house its most important information.
Defence and GCSB Minister Andrew Little said the first funding for data centre at the Whenuapai air force base in west Auckland was approved in 2019.
The decision to lift the lid on the hitherto secret project reflected a recommendation made in 2020 by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the terrorist attack on Christchurch mosques that the Government should be more upfront about national security challenges, he said.
‘‘Sometimes it’s worse when you don’t say things you don’t need to withhold; you can create a whole lot of rumours that we just don’t need.’’
Little said the data centre, which is due to be completed by 2025, was ‘‘an essential and longterm investment to further ensure core public-service information storage well into this century’’.
The Government Communications Security Bureau would operate the facility on behalf of a broad range of government agencies that would use it to store data for at least the next 25 years, he said.
Little would not detail exactly what sort of information would be held and processed at the facility, but said it was ‘‘information that people could expect would be reasonably sensitive’’.
‘‘It’s information collected by a range of government agencies, including the intelligence agencies, but also Police, Customs, and others.’’
That would ‘‘pretty much’’ be information that agencies held in the past, the difference being the Government would have its own facility so it could be confident that was being stored securely, he said.
‘‘We wanted to make sure that the facility that that particular information is stored in is one
that is both domiciled in New Zealand and controlled by New Zealand.
‘‘We are well and truly living in a digital age and the way in which protected government information is managed into the future is becoming more and more important,’’ the minister said.
Government agencies would continue to use privately-owned data centres to store the bulk of their information, he said.
About 150 people will be involved in building the facility at the peak of the construction activity.
For security reasons, the GCSB would not disclose the number of people who would work at the facility once it was completed, Little said.
Funding for the facility was allocated by Cabinet in tranches in 2019, 2021 and 2022 from the GCSB’s budget.
Little emphasised the facility was a data centre and not a spy base, but acknowledged a potential for conspiracy theories.
’’You can’t control what people with a fertile imagination will come up with. I think anybody would understand many government departments hold protected information and expect it to be held securely.
‘‘So this does all those things and we’re being open about it,’’ Little said.
Little was unable to confirm whether leaders of the National Party had been informed about the investment.
It is understood the conventions around national security mean that would have been a matter for the GCSB to determine.