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Central Government

Government Cloud: Public or Private?

By Robin Hicks | 19 January 2010

Asia‘s first ever public sector summit on cloud computing suggested that the economics of cloud computing trumped other concerns - but that private clouds would be the necessary first stepping stone to prove the technology could deliver.

Singapore’s Orchard district was even busier than usual one morning in November, as 160 government delegates streamed into the Grand Hyatt to learn about the hottest topic in IT: cloud computing.

For all the hype, the thinking on how government can make best use of the cloud remains decidedly fluffy. Cloud computing seems to promise a lot but the realities of cloud computing in the public sector have yet to be confronted.

How feasible is it to phase out legacy systems? How will IT provisioning change? And, the $64,000 question, how secure is my data in the cloud?

These were just a few of the questions raised at the Government Cloud Forum. For the benefit of those of you who couldn’t make it, here is what Laurence Millar, FutureGov’s Editor-at-Large (and the former Government Chief Information Officer of New Zealand) concluded after a day spent chairing the event:

Sid Lasley, Alliances Director, Asia Pacific, Informatica: Regardless of whether working within the confines of a public or private cloud, having a sound data integration strategy across all data assets is imperative to ensuring that governments benefit from the advantages of cloud computing, like improved productivity and lower expenses. But with the rapid growth and adoption of cloud-based services, for most organisations the result is more fragmented data scattered throughout the enterprise. The software as a service (SaaS) model has proven to provide business users with cost-effective solutions that are easy to provision, manage, and use. All of these powerful and valuable benefits are quickly diminished if the organisation doesn’t maintain proper control over these data assets. As governments develop a cloud strategy, it is imperative that they remain in control of all of their data assets and that they have the greatest flexibility to access, integrate, and trust them—wherever they are.

Cédric Hüesler, Director of Product Marketing, Day Software: Whether you choose a public or private cloud, today‘s upcoming cloud technology will transform how government agencies use virtualised data centres and consolidated operations. Ultimately, the goal for all IT departments is to gain agility and cost-effectiveness by adopting a cloud computing business model. The decision has different implications. The use of privately operated large-scale virtualisation avoids the legal challenge of hosting government data and applications in other legal systems and under unknown security environments. On the other hand, the trend of citizen-driven innovation in public services, thanks to open government data, favours the public cloud, especially with its potential to reach a wider audience and enable simpler sharing.

Laurence Millar, FutureGov’s, Editor-at-Large I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was no shortage of substance behind any of the initiatives presented by governments. So what were the key take home messages? Most of us are now pretty confident that cloud computing can deliver benefits at a whole of government level: rapid deployment and agility, green IT, lower costs, scalability for programmes with unknown or peak volumes such as the Youth Olympic Games or the Census, and reduction in barriers to cross agency working. It is therefore hardly surprising that government speakers from the US and Asia outlined how they have created panel contracts to enable easy deployment by government agencies.

Probably the most comprehensive is the federal US site www.apps.gov, which provides shopping cart purchasing for US government agencies from a catalogue of over 3,000 applications. IDA Singapore also described a range of Software as a Service applications including Product Life Cycle, HR management, Accounting and Financials, Recruitment, Enterprise Feedback, and Customer Loyalty.

As prudent public servants with a careful eye on risk management, delegates were interested in the areas to look out for. The two major areas that were of most interest were transition risks and data issues - data security, confidentiality, lock-in, legislative and other regulatory requirements, control and liability. Governments that demonstrate leadership in responding to these challenges will be the future winners. “In the end the savings offered by utilities become too compelling to resist, even for the largest enterprises.” The quote is from The Big Switch, a book by Nicholas Carr, which compares Cloud Computing with the move from individual power generators to a national electricity grid. And, by the way, the answer to my initial question in this piece is a resounding ‘No’. Cloud Computing is here to stay.

Yaj Malik, Area VP, Asean, Citrix Systems: Cloud computing has huge potential to transform IT in government, but it is up to public sector organisations to strike the right balance between creating internal clouds and making effective use of those from external providers. Organisations adopting cloud computing must remember it is the responsibility of the organisation, not the service provider, to secure valuable data. Likewise, detailed service level agreements (SLAs) need to be put in place to ensure reliability and sustainability for a technology that is outside of the organisation. We think that the future of cloud computing for government lies in both public and private clouds, depending on the government’s security requirements. Currently, many government organisations are leaning towards private clouds, labelling them ‘defence computing clouds’.

This shift is often due to the privacy and legislation issues surfacing with cloud computing, such as reduced control over physical security. Government organisations will need to shift their IT strategy to include a broad mix of private and public clouds in order to truly realise its benefits, aligned to the privacy and security needs of each data set they are using.

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