What’s cloud got to do with IT?
Never has public sector efficiency been under more scrutiny since the advent of collaborative communications. By this, I mean the desire and ability for citizens to interact online, whether it's remote e-voting or accessing government services from home or the office.
A recent Accenture report shows that Australian Government online services, along with other traditionally First World countries, are lagging developed countries, such as Singapore and Canada.
So what place does cloud computing in this discussion?
Well, if we’re to move towards greater efficiency, cloud has the ability to "change the game". In the same way that cloud computing is bringing greater business agility to the enterprise, it allows government organisations to become more innovative and service-oriented, and to consolidate multiple systems and data repositories into a single multi-tenancy environment.
We’re seeing customers purchasing the Vblock platform to build private cloud computing to accelerate speed to market and develop new services faster. For example, one of our clients, Enspire, recently launched one of the first infrastructure-as-a-service products in Australia using Vblock (see video case study).
In the UK, Logicalis has helped Wales to become the first country in the world to achieve the vision of a completely borderless network embracing all of its public services. Eventually all 350,000 public sector workers in Wales – including several thousand home-based staff – will be able to access the network to aid inter-agency collaboration, reduce cost and increase the efficiency of public services. At the heart of the network is Logicalis' Community G-Cloud.
Enspire and the Welsh Government serves as an example for how Government in Australia can be progressive. By embracing the scale, cost efficiency and sustainability that cloud computing provides, Government can transform how it interacts with its constituents, and significantly improve service delivery efficiency.
We think it’s time for the public sector in Australia to make the cloud connection.
