The meeting was chaired by the Ministry of Finances and Public Administration, thus giving the project and the above announcement an unprecedented political backing.
SARA is the platform for delivering cloud services for the Public Sector, with the objective of bridging the existing digital divide. The actual economic crisis is pushing the government to adopt more efficient methods in order to fully use the capabilities of Information Technology in its processes and services, through, in this case, the cloud computing delivery model. It is for this reason that the Spanish public administration is putting on speed for the adoption of cloud-computing as the reference model for the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the administrative units of all the government layers.
The Spanish public administration bets on a model of private cloud using its own technology infrastructure resources. This infrastructure considers SARA as its cornerstone, which is in turn connected to the Trans European Services for Telematics between Administrations (TESTA) Network deployed by the European Commission. SARA provides the interconnection between all government layers (National, Regional and Local) as 90% of the population lives in a city or village connected to SARA. Several shared services are provided to the administrative units connected to SARA, with the platform for eID validation and the eDelivery system being among the most used applications.
The initial bet of relying on its own technological infrastructure to build the Spanish Public Administration cloud, is not incompatible with the use of public cloud solutions. Furthermore, the government supports exploring the use of virtual private cloud adapted to the specific needs of public administrations. To this end, the Spanish Public Administration is part of the C4E (Cloud for Europe) consortium with other European countries (Estonia, Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Italy, Germany, Slovenia, Turkey, Finland and the Netherlands), aiming to acquire cloud services following the lines of the pre-commercial public procurement model with the support of the FP7.
The declaration of SARA as the basis for the Spanish Public Administrations private cloud is only the official confirmation of a sound reality. Some services are already provided following a cloud-like model using SARA as the delivery platform. As an example, with the aim of promoting the adoption of a paperless administration in the local government, the Ministry of Finance and Public Administration provides to municipalities, through SARA, the Virtual Office service registry (ORVE). ORVE facilitates the integration of the face-to-face applications of the Public Administration into the eDelivery system exchanging, as a consequence, citizen’s applications between administrative units in seconds instead than of a fortnight. ORVE is already serving the municipalities of the Regional Government of Madrid.
The adoption of SARA as the cornerstone of the Spanish Public Administration Cloud will be accompanied by future legislative actions. Thus, in the foreseen reform of the National Interoperability Framework, which is part of the Spanish legal framework, are included provisions aiming to encourage the adoption of cloud-computing by the Government, integrating the concept of sharing, reuse and collaboration into the cloud model.
Finally, the Digital Agenda for Spain will also promote the development and use of the cloud as a key mechanism to ensure the competitiveness of companies, using cloud services in the public sector as a driver and source of knowledge and establishing governmental advisory channels and collaborative forums in order to exchange experiences with the private sector.
Further Information:
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Emilio García García
Quelle/Source: epractice, 18.01.2013
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