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Cloud Computing in Government

Cloud Computing in Government

POINT OF VIEW Feb 2012

Cloud Computing in Government


Government leaders and Agencies world over are increasingly seeking to leverage technology solutions to share information, improve efficiencies and effectiveness of public service delivery, and ultimately enhance their interactions with their constituents. With cloud computing gaining momentum from the private sector globally, question is being raised and rightly so that if it works for business, why can it not for the government. Indeed, Government agencies can reduce administrative costs, increase collaboration, improve citizen Services, and gain insights through advanced analytics in a cost effective manner by adopting cloud. In turn this can help government effectively deal with some of its major challenges such as budget deficits, economic pressures, rising expectations of the citizens, demand for greater transparency, environmental concerns, cyber security and public security threats. Lets see how Government can utilize cloud: Effectively communicate and collaborate There is growing demand for transparency and collaboration from public and within different government constituencies. In addition, Governments need to establish and manage their online presence strategically and effectively to engage with constituents. Cloud communication and collaboration solutions can help agencies gain faster access to the latest technologies at lower costs and also help enhance efficiencies and innovation across departments. Also, everincreasing digital deluge in form of e-mails, blogs and other forms of electronic communications is forcing many agencies to explore cloud as a storage option. With both the application and the data stored in the cloud, it becomes easy for multiple users located globally to work together. Improve efficiencies and effectiveness of public service delivery By adopting cloud computing, government can move out of the business of using and managing servers and focus instead on more mission-critical technology projects in their agencies. Improved agility in deploying and running new applications, computing capacity, and services can be achieved by using cloud. Cloud computing combined with high speed broadband connectivity, offers major opportunities to dramatically improve the speed, quality and availability of services across all levels of government, more so for local governments based in regional and remote areas. This can be used as a tool to drive economic and social development by enhancing the delivery of public services, such as e-health,egovernance and e-learning.

Cloud Computing in Government


Cost Cutting Cost pressures such as economic downturn and the resulting strains on fiscal budgets have led governments to increasingly explore the Cloud computing as an option for cost cutting. Cloud Infrastructure offers undeniable financial payback higher utilization, lower energy use, lowers per unit costs, economies of scale and the simpler operations management. Sharing of resources and services across multiple government units such as those at federal and state level through use of Community Cloud helps consolidate investments in IT assets for the whole of government. Thus, Cloud can help reduce government transaction costs, and also allow government to tilt the delivery model for Software and IT Services in its favor as a volume purchaser. Notable under this is the concept of Government or G-Cloud that has emerged as a uniform IT procurement channel for public sector to achieve large, cross government economies of scale. It envisages a common marketplace that contains a large number of cloud based products and provides a one stop IT procurement solution all the government agencies. For example, UK government has already opened its cloud store, an online application store for government agencies to procure services. Advanced Analytics and Business Intelligence Government agencies especially those dealing with security and crime such as Department of Defense, Homeland Security and Intelligence Community are major adopters of Big Data solutions to handle intelligence and information overload. Constant examination of internet and social network traffic for the kinds of signals that yield important insights requires Big Data analytics. Big Data Analytics involves processing very large sets of data, harnessing clusters of computers which cloud infrastructure readily provides. Cloud technologies can be used to provision much higher capacity as and when needed for real-time analysis in the disruptive events such as volcanic eruptions. Cyber security, Public services Improvement, Nuclear Research, Genomics simulation also require in-depth business intelligence that can benefit from cloud. For example, Social Security Administration is planning to use SaaS analytics solution to gauge public satisfaction of its site socialsecurity.gov.

Cloud Computing in Government


In addition to the above benefits there are various other areas within the government that can benefit from adopting cloud (as you can see on the left). For Government, protecting personal, confidential and privileged information is critical from a public safety standpoint. Therefore, Government agencies must address a host of issues such as risk and privacy, 'locked in' contracts, geo-political, legislative and regulatory constraints as they consider moving to cloud. Public cloud may be considered when data is already in the public domain whether it is in regard to citizen-facing unclassified services or public information and public-facing websites. For example, Sites such as www.data.gov.au are already hosted in public Cloud. The need to fully address issues such as privacy, security and the entry of citizen data into the 'public Cloud' precludes the widespread adoption of public Clouds by government agencies in the near term. However, Private and Community Clouds can be used to store citizen data behind government firewalls in the medium to short term. Various vendors are beginning to offer such clouds for governments which are secure to handle critical data with Tier 3 data centers coupled with regulations and frameworks such as ISO-27002, COBIT and FISMA. In order to effectively leverage the cloud computing technology in the organization, CIO of government agency has to ensure that a proper assessment of the organizations IT landscape is made. Adopting cloud has an impact not only on your application landscape but also on IT governance and related areas. It is recommended that an organization should create cloud strategy in line with their business strategy for systematically leveraging cloud computing capabilities.

Cloud Computing in Government


About HCL Technologies HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company, working with clients in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their businesses. HCLs Enterprise Transformation Services group assists our forward-looking customers to develop a roadmap that aligns business strategy with IT strategy. The group offers an integrated approach towards business processes, technology, application and data to deliver end-to-end services that supports transformation across the enterprise in areas of Cloud Consulting Services.

About HCL Cloud Computing Consulting Practices HCL's cloud consulting services help customers evaluate cloud as part of their overall IT service delivery strategy, recommend which enterprise applications can be moved to the cloud, target operating model, benefits/risks, people, process and technology for using Cloud. The service includes creation of enterprise cloud strategy, cloud governance, readiness and migration assessments for adoption of cloud platforms.

About the Authors Amanbir Kaur Randhawa is a principal consultant with HCL Technologies Business and IT Transformation Services practice and has been instrumental in developing HCLs cloud migration framework. In last 7 years of her experience she has worked on transformation initiatives for Fortune 500 clients spanning engagements around Business and IT Strategy, Cloud strategy and value discovery. She can be reached at amanbir.kaur@hcl.com Swapnil Kumar is a principal consultant with HCL Technologies Business and IT Transformation Services practice and has been instrumental in developing HCLs cloud migration framework. In last 7 years of her experience she has worked on transformation initiatives for Fortune 500 clients spanning engagements around Business and IT Strategy, Cloud strategy and value discovery. She can be reached at swapnil.kumar@hcl.com Rupak Rathore is a principal consultant with HCL Technologies Business and IT Transformation Services practice and is key innovator behind CRI and associated frameworks. Over last 15 years, he has helped many customers use technology to deliver superior value to businesses. He can be reached at rupak.rathore@hcl.com Business and IT Transformation Services (BITS) arm of HCL aims to increase value of IT while reducing cost and mitigating risks associated with such transformation. BITS provides consulting services across the globe and has many Global 1000 companies as its customers. Reach us at cloudconsulting@hcl.com

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