Amazon Web Services (AWS) is building a data center for Australia's government that will handle top-secret information.

First reported by Bloomberg, the data center and cloud system will be developed as a partnership between AWS and the Australian government, and the latter will invest A$2 billion (US$1.3 billion) in the new system over the next ten years.

Through the partnership, staff from agencies such as the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service will be able to collaborate without using the open Internet.

Due to the "top secret" nature of the project, neither the location nor the specifics of the data to be handled at the facility have been shared.

According to deputy prime minister Richard Marles, the solution will improve the resilience for the country's defense department, will improve its war-fighting capacity, and provide up to 2,000 jobs for Australians.

“Modern conflict is more reliant upon information technology, upon computing infrastructure, than ever before,” Marles said.

He added: "It will ensure that Australia maintains and increases its interoperability with our alliance partner, the United States."

Though AWS is an American company, the solution will remain under Australian law and will be "fully sovereign."

AWS will construct three facilities to house the cloud system, which will be purpose-built for the defense and intelligence agencies. The data centers are expected to be operational by 2027.

The Australian government has been looking into a cloud solution since 2021. Microsoft was initially involved in talks, but walked away from project, reports the Australian Financial Review. The government then began discussions with AWS early last year.

Until now, Australian agencies operated their own data centers. The move to AWS will provide greater redundancy, and will also enable the agencies to use AWS's suite of tools, including AI (artificial intelligence).

Australian Signals Directorate chief Rachel Noble said: "Artificial intelligence is an important game changer for all of us in the intelligence community, and we are working to embrace the use of it in an ethical, well governed and well-understood manner, where we understand very carefully when we bring AI tools into our environment how are they being used, what are they doing to the data and do we understand how carefully they need to be governed?"

Amazon's Australian public sector division managing director Iain Rouse added: “We’ve been here for a decade, we employ thousands of Australian citizens today. In the last decade, we’ve invested $9.1 billion in Australia, and we’ve committed [a] further $13.2 billion worth of investment through to 2027.”

Earlier this year, Amazon announced that it was planning new data centers in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia.