At the time, PASC was chiding the government for its slow progress in bringing about the ICT Strategic Implementation Plan, which is intended to complement the Government ICT Strategy published in March 2011. Together, these two plans outline the government’s “longer term programmes of reform to improve Government ICT and deliver greater savings.”
The Cloud
A large part of the plan for these intended savings rests on Cloud computing. The government’s Cloud strategy was first published in October 2011, and by December 2015 the target is for 50 percent of central government departments’ new ICT spending to be focused on Cloud computing.
Whether or not this target is achievable remains to be seen. But it is true to say that the Cloud has dominated the government IT news agenda for some time, with the G-Cloud Programme and the CloudStore never far from the headlines since launching earlier this year. It is only fair to state that those headlines have been both positive and negative in turn, but the government has been unremitting in its message that Cloud computing is the future for government ICT.
Promise
The current situation is certainly showing promise, as the introduction of apps provided in the Cloud has already brought new possibilities and methods of working within government. Examples of this are interesting and diverse, so it is instructive to briefly cite a couple of recent projects. First, the use of the Cloud to share data around parking and road usage at a local government level. The data is collected and stored in Cloud applications, and once aggregated this forms a powerful resource which can be analysed and used to improve future services for the public.
Second, iPads are now being used in Parliament for the first time, following a recent change in Parliamentary rules. MPs can now use tablets and mobile devices to research around debates, checking statistics and facts to build their arguments in real time. In this way, technological progress has a genuine chance to change the course of representative democracy as we know it.
From improving parking and road planning to potentially altering the course of parliamentary democracy – you would struggle to find two more diverse examples of how technology and the Cloud are changing public sector IT. These two scenarios show the expansive reach of new technology and its capacity to improve service delivery and affect new areas of our government, rather than being seen purely as a machine to provide cost savings.
The parliamentary iPad in particular is a good example of a project which came about thanks in part to a sensible attitude to risk. One of the basic principles of the government’s new ICT strategy is balancing risk. There will always be an element of risk in any new endeavour, and of course this must be carefully managed, particularly when projects are being paid for by the public purse. However, an overemphasis on risk avoidance above all else will stifle ICT innovation and in doing so could prevent good ideas and genuine savings from ever seeing the light of day. Breaking the mould doesn’t have to mean throwing caution to the wind, but sometimes a little risk is necessary if the government wants to deliver on its vision.
One of the major effects of the move into the Cloud which is already evident is the change it has caused in the commercial modelling in UK government ICT. Cloud technology has already advanced a move away from “build your own” software to a more collaborative approach, mirroring “real world” shared service projects which have grown in popularity as pressure on budgets continues. Government bodies are increasingly collaborating on applications, sharing costs and management responsibilities in an effort to promote efficiency. It is this sort of practical, achievable cost saving that the government has to focus on if it is to meet its targets: Cloud is expected to save £20m in 2012/13, £40m the year after and £120m in 2014/15.
Part of this saving will come from standardisation made possible by Cloud. The government’s strategy is designed to put a stop to the old days of 12 government departments each having their own individual version of an ERP platform. The new paradigm is for all these departments to operate on largely the same platform, reducing implementation, maintenance and management costs. That is not to say that there is no room for customisation, but the new intended model can be neatly summed up in one phrase: eighty percent build, twenty percent tweak.
Government IT Strategy
But it’s not all about making savings. The CloudStore makes new technology readily available to the public sector, and one only has to look at the recent success of social enterprise app Huddle to see the effect the CloudStore is having as a facilitator and delivery method for new technology which will enable the public sector to work in new, more effective ways.
The CloudStore and G-Cloud Programme will undoubtedly be the biggest drivers for change in central government ICT. In many ways, they have to be: the government is relying on the Cloud to transform public sector IT via the delivery of scalable, agile IT systems to deliver better solutions at a lower cost. Remember, the government's ICT strategy is designed to save £1.3bn by the end of 2015, and the Cloud is central to the government’s ICT strategy as it seeks to streamline delivery and make public sector IT leaner and more effective in one fell swoop.
The verdict's clare: Cloud is already playing a major role in public sector technology, and we can expect this role to grow exponentially in the coming months and years as the government looks to meet its savings targets.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Rahoul Bhansali
Quelle/Source: BusinessCloud9, 09.07.2012
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