Most government agencies to adopt IPv6 by year's end: AGIMO

08.10.2012
The Australian government says agencies have made "good progress" toward enabling IPv6 by year end. However, Internet Society of Australia (ISOC-AU) President Narelle Clark said she has doubts that this will happen without a formal mandate like the one in the US.

"Agencies are expected to have their external facing ICT systems IPv6 capable by [the end of] December 2012," said a spokeswoman for the the Australian Government Information Management Office.

"This is a target date and not mandatory. Agencies regularly report their progress and most are likely to achieve this date."

The Australian government set the end-of-December 2012 goal in a 2008 paper, A Strategy for the Implementation of IPv6 in Government Agencies (PDF). The Strategy outlined a three-stage process to transition to IPv6 with target dates for each phase.

ISOC AU's Clark is not quite as upbeat about the government's movement to IPv6. "I'm not seeing a lot of progress," she told Computerworld Australia. The team at AGIMO "have been very thorough and supportive. Sadly, their effectiveness has been low."

To illustrate her point, Clark points to by Internet architect Mark Prior. Covered with red "FAIL" signs, the chart paints a more pessimistic picture of agencies' adoption of IPv6.