The US is doing it; Japan's doing it; now finally the UK looks as though it might be getting its very own public sector Cloud after outgoing Communications minister Lord Carter announced plans for the G-Cloud as part of his Digital Britain report – if they can make the sums add up!
Carter said the so-called G-Cloud should be created within the next three years, to allow local and central government departments to share centrally hosted applications. He said “substantial savings" can be made in public spending by building a government-wide Cloud Computing platform. Presumed savings would come from cutting the number of government data centres and reducing overall hardware spend, lower software licensing costs and reduced maintenance and security costs.
The report noted: “The G-Cloud Computing delivery model would also help make other parts of the Government IT marketplace more cost-effective, flexible and competitive. It would support and encourage the adoption of higher levels of standardisation and sharing of IT services across departments. It would allow Government to provide more cost-effectively for peaks and surges in demand for e-Government services; and it would reduce the barriers to entry to the Government marketplace for application and other IT vendors, including SMEs, who would be able to provide services running on standardised, secure infrastructure without having to incur the costs of establishing and accrediting their own infrastructure.”
Making it add up
But Carter's commitment to the Cloud Computing is not as wholehearted and unreserved as, for example, that of President Barack Obama. It will ultimately depend on acceptance of a business case currently being developed by the CIO Council in the Cabinet Office and UK IT trade association Intellect. “The establishment of a G-Cloud Computing will however require investment in technical development and physical facilities, and the CIO Council and the Intellect Public Sector Council are now developing the strategic business case to justify funding the G-Cloud Computing,” said Lord Carter. “Provided that this business case can be properly developed, the adoption of the G-Cloud Computing will be a priority for Government investment to secure efficiencies, even within the very constrained framework for public expenditure, over the next 3 years.”
That said, there has been some thought given to how to realise the G-Cloud vision. “The strategy study has established a route-map towards the creation of a G-Cloud Computing, as part of the rationalisation of data centres used by Government and the wider public sector,” said the report. “This would both allow Government to benefit from the core attributes of Cloud Computing Computing e.g. enhanced user experience, flexible pricing, elastic scaling, rapid provisioning, advanced virtualisation while also maintaining the appropriate levels of security, accountability and control required for most Government systems, and lead to substantial savings in costs.
But in a positive sign, from now on all government bodies buying new IT services or systems must do so "on a scalable, Cloud Computing basis such that other public bodies can benefit from the new capability”. In other words, IT procurements should be mind with a view to how they will fit within the wider G-Cloud Computing infrastructure in 3 or more years time. In order to achieve this, the government's CIO John Suffolk would have to sign off all major new IT projects.
All of this is dependent on the findings and recommendations of the Digital Britain report being accepted. The report has run into enormous controversy in other areas as a result of its 'broadband tax' of 50 pence a month on everyone with a fixed phone line.
