Ardern's anger at APEC meeting fiasco led to a bungled $33m MFAT cloud project

Jacinda Ardern was reportedly not impressed at MFAT's initial Microsoft Teams setup at Apec. (Image: Getty/POOL)

Tue, 30 Jul 2024

Sources say a $33 million Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade cloud IT project, which nearly tripled in cost since 2021, has been a failure for all of its existence, and the wider ministry was made aware of it before millions of dollars were misspent. The project's origin story can be traced back to a moment with former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at the 2021 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) reportedly had no technical capability to get a Microsoft...

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