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 cloud, whether through a public cloud or private one, has enabled private businesses to gain incredible efficiencies, share data better, and promote easier and more widespread access throughout a widely dispersed organisation. The term "data silo" has become a bad word in business, and efforts are underway in just about every large organisation to overcome their limitations. Yet, in the UK, over 130 data centres exist to support multiple discrete processes. Governments throughout the EU and the world are only just now starting to see the potential benefits and public good of e-government.
An Accenture report outlines some of the concerns and barriers facing cloud adoption in the public sector. While governments do have some valid concerns, these concerns can certainly be overcome either procedurally or technologically. The first concern is questions over jurisdiction, which is particularly relevant in the European Union. The SIENA initiative (Standards and Interoperability for e-Infrastructure implementation initiative), is working towards a common vision for a standards-based and interoperable e-infrastructure throughout the EU. The goal should be easily accomplished. Other issues are less procedural and more technical (but still not rocket science), such as the ability to ensure that cloud-based systems can be integrated with other systems within the same agency, and of course, data security. The European Commission is already on its game, and has been soliciting feedback for its agenda: "Europe's strategy for a flourishing digital economy by 2020." The agency is looking into the cross-border data protection and liability issues, as well as soliciting feedback on how to overcome the procedural, legal and technical barriers that could stand in the way.
Just what is, precisely, the public good that would come out of an EU-wide cloud computing e-government initiative? To be brief, the same benefits that accrue to businesses that do the same thing. That is, the ability to minimize the need for private and costly data centres; the ability for stakeholders to more easily share and gain access to data, applications and infrastructure; and greater transparency—which in the government realm especially is almost always something that yields a social benefit.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Dan Blacharski
Quelle/Source: One Stop Click, 05.08.2011
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