IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Police across the UK are considering a major move to cloud computing, dumping on-premise IT in an aggressive bid to cut costs, ComputerworldUK.com can reveal.

In a move likely to be seen as controversial given the sensitivity of police data, the Metropolitan Police is planning how to run a variety of front-end systems – for managing patrols, operations, incidents and investigations, managing evidence and forensics, and collating information – in the cloud. It is understood that if the project goes ahead, the Metropolitan Police would be the lead customer, with other forces buying services through a framework deal.

In total there are over 1700 services that made it through the G-Cloud framework accreditation process and are now available in a searchable catalogue at www.gov.uk/cloudstore.

On first sight, aside from the new breed of SME providers who’ve made it onto the initial ranking, the big winners are Microsoft – the CloudStore itself has been built on Microsoft Azure – and SAP - whose Business Objects and Business ByDesign ERP offering are among its entries onto the catalogue - as well as Google which makes it onto the list which conspicuously doesn’t have a lot of the better known ‘Cloud champions’ from the US.

"In the global race for growth, business and government need every competitive advantage possible. We need a strong, thriving and innovative ICT sector across the UK and here in Scotland," Mundell was quoted as saying by CloudPro.

Mundell made the comment on a recent trip to the Glasgow-based cloud services provider iomart Group. He said cloud computing could help revive the Scottish economy by creating jobs and giving companies a competitive edge.

The Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) has allocated £12.5 million to a new cloud computing shared services initiative for universities and colleges.

Last week, HEFCE announcemed the details of its cuts to university funding. In what HEFCE chief executive Sir Alan Langlands described as a “challenging financial settlement”, £940 million will cut from teaching, research and buildings budgets in the coming financial year.

'Connect Digitally', formerly the school eAdmissions national project set up in 2004, is a central-local partnership funded by the Department for Education (DfE) and led by Hertfordshire county council. Its focus is online school admissions and automated application for free school meals, helping achieve electronic service take-up rates in some areas of 80% or higher, the level at which the government considers services to be "digital by default". More recently its work has widened to boost take-up of all online public services.

The Federal Government of Nigeria, through Galaxy Backbone Limited (GBB) under the Sovereign Digitalisation Programme 1Government Cloud, has commenced the full-scale rollout of paperless governance.

Pioneering this landmark initiative are key Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) including the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation & Digital Economy; Ministry of Solid Minerals; Ministry of Steel Development; Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Federal Ministry of Justice; Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria; and the Federal Ministry of Intergovernmental Affairsamong others soon to follow.

In a new report (2012 Trends to Watch: Government Technology), the independent technology analyst firm claims that next year will be the year that governments turn to cloud computing, data analytics and agile development to respond to times of austerity.

Dr Steve Hodgkinson, Ovum research director and co-author of the report, commented: “Cloud computing is maturing as a revolutionary step change in the way computing can be sourced and managed. Governments need to look beyond the hype and see the reality of both the opportunities and risks of cloud computing and factor these into both their industry development policies and their internal IT strategies.”

The projects will help make government information available to the public and stimulate innovative industries, Chu said.

Chu, who also serves as deputy convener of the Board of Science and Technology under the Executive Yuan, made the comments at a BOST meeting on open data promotion strategies.

Just take a look at any government RFP—specifications tend to be highly granular and unduly specific, to the point where off-the-shelf commodity software often has to be replaced with a custom job.

The report, entitled Trends to Watch: Government Technology, was carried out by independent analyst firm Ovum and details key government technology trends set to make their mark next year.

In addition to cloud computing, the report predicted data analytics and agile development as other emerging trends.

The cloud is destined to play a much larger role in healthcare than it has so far. That will be especially true as more providers adopt e-health records and other digitized clinical systems. It will also be pushed along by storage-hungry systems like 3-D medical imaging and health information exchanges looking to provide more efficient ways to share data.

Healthcare has been slower to embrace cloud models than other industries. The reasons for this range from security concerns to a heavy reliance on paper that has kept many hospitals and medical practices from moving quickly to electronic systems.

All around the world, public sector organisations are beginning to understand the transformative impact that the cloud can have on their operations. The Estonian government, for example, has created its Virtual Data Embassy Solution, which is undoubtedly at the cutting edge of national e-governance policies. Global pharmaceutical tech company Catalent, meanwhile, has boosted global efficiency and productivity with cloud services. And the UK’s Department for Education is using the technology to help it improve education and learning, and to achieve greater transparency.

Future of Smart Cities is not a distant vision anymore, but it is unfolding right now. It is basically driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing. The two technologies are doing more than just streamlining city functions like traffic management and energy efficiency. They are actively reshaping the way urban spaces operate and interact with the people in the cities.

City planners and governments across the globe are reimagining urban living through the lens of technology. Future of smart cities will depend on intelligent systems that can process vast data streams, make real-time decisions and simultaneously also adapt rapidly to change. AI and cloud are at the heart of the and these are not just tools, but enablers of a sustainable, secure as well as inclusive future.

Problems arise when the company becomes unsatisfied with the vendor or simply wants to switch to another software package with better features or lower cost. Suddenly, your IT people realize that everything, including all of your data, is locked in a proprietary system that the vendor will not reveal to you. Moreover, if that vendor stops supporting the software or even goes out of business, you have no way of recovering your data.

Here are ways agencies can leverage tools to deliver computing to any point on a map.

Local governments can finally realize many of the objectives they’ve been planning for the past few years. Much of this is thanks to rapid advancements in artificial intelligence. It’s now possible to extract real-time actionable intelligence and decision-making from virtually any point on a map.

Huawei has released the National Cloud 2.0 solution world to help government organisations around the world accelerate national digital transformation and promote intelligence.

Mr Hu Yuhai, Vice President of Huawei Hybrid Cloud, said: “Global digital transformation has reached a new stage of full intelligence driven by data and AI.

The National Cloud 2.0 solution from Huawei provides trusted cloud infrastructure, innovative cloud services, and extensive industry know-how. We aim to help governments achieve national digital visions faster.”

To explain this consider the concept of “i-Government”, rather than e-Government, simply to reflect the role Identity technologies will play. Universal adoption of standards like OpenID will enable ‘single sign-on’ across all web applications, including those of government.

VP of Solutions Architecture at iland, Marc Beder, talks to DIGIT about the digital transformation landscape and addressing commonly-seen shortcomings using the Cloud.

Digital transformation, in a tangible sense that’s effective for businesses, seems to be becoming ever more nebulous, with strategies implemented with the best intentions often causing more harm than good when factors such as cost and the deployment of resources are not kept in check.

You’ve probably heard of cloud computing—a popular way now to access data stored elsewhere from your device. Its mention evokes an imagery that is benign and endearing, like rain-bearing clouds. A beguilingly naturalistic metaphor for technology. For, what’s actually entailed in cloud computing are millions of square feet of energy-guzzling data centres filled with whirring hard disks that require a lot of electricity to run and be kept in ambient temperature. And they are leaving beh­ind a carbon footprint the size of the last cumulonimbus cloud you saw.

As part of the MoU, HP intends to transform an existing rural health center in Aliyabad, located 45 kilometers from Hyderabad, into an eHealth center by deploying a fully integrated cloud technology solution. The solution will connect the medical equipment deployed at the eHealth center with an eHealth cloud and collect basic patient health data to enable better medical diagnosis. The eHealth Center is expected to give close to 20,000 people across 10 villages an opportunity to receive quality diagnosis and treatment from doctors seated at a telemedicine studio in SHARE INDIA - MediCiti Hospital at Ghanpur Village in Medchal Mandal, Ranga Reddy District of Andhra Pradesh.