Challenges in wide-scale government cloud adoption

The cloud offers easy scalability, cost savings, flexibility, and resilience. Government entities in the cloud also enjoy these benefits. They can, for instance, scale up their services when needed quickly and shed resources easily when the peak demand passes. The cloud reduces energy and carbon emissions by about 30% compared to conventional solutions. The savings realise due to the consolidated nature of cloud servers and economies of scale. Before the pandemic, only 11% of US federal IT systems ran on the cloud. Despite the focus and budgetary support of late, less than half of US federal and state government departments use the cloud as of the start of 2023. The figure is more-or-less the same in other parts of the world. Singapore, one of the leaders in government cloud adoption, has migrated about 60% of workloads to the commercial cloud. The government plans to increase the figure to 70% by the end of 2023.

The reasons for the slow pace of governments adopting the cloud are many.

1. Concerns about migration costs

There is a popular misconception that using the public cloud, especially migration, is costly. The reality is that cloud computing is cost-efficient. Doing away with the need to procure expensive equipment saves substantial upfront costs. The Israeli Ministry of Tourism saved 10% to 20% of the annual IT operating budget by migrating to the cloud.

Most government departments nevertheless work on fixed budgets and do well to:

Conduct a cost-benefit analysis to ensure the financial feasibility of the cloud initiative. Selecting projects with a good return on investment makes the project controversy-free.
Start with small and simple use cases and scale up after fine-tuning the migration.
Go cloud native and adopt tools available on the cloud rather than build new services from scratch. Maintaining bespoke systems is challenging and adds to the cost.
Engage with commercial cloud providers to co-opt the latest technologies and best practices. Governments can develop rules of engagement to deal with technology procurement regulations.

2. Security and privacy issues

Many government departments believe that on-premises solutions are more secure than the public cloud. While this may have had some truth in the early days of the cloud, this is no longer the case. The cloud infrastructure enables real-time deployment of the most advanced security mechanisms. Upgrading the security of an on-premises stack is time-consuming and cost-intensive.

Governments could prioritise cloud data security by

Implementing robust security measures, such as multi-factor authentication and regular security audits.
Opting for edge computing. The edge delivers processing near the source, helping government entities retain data at the exact location. Storing and processing sensitive data in distant cloud servers often goes against regulations.
Implementing encryption. Almost all cloud service providers encrypt data, making the data useless for any snooper without the encryption key.

3. Lack of in-house expertise

Governments often do not have the in-house expertise to manage cloud-based systems. Governments, stifled with the procedure and limited budgets, cannot go overboard to headhunt talent.

Government departments with enough resources could build a strong cloud engineering team. Make sure the team has the capabilities to understand risks. GovTech, Singapore’s Government Technology Agency, has followed this route to good effect. Governments could also:

Invest in employee training and support to ensure they have the necessary skills to use and manage cloud-based systems.
Leverage resources that get work done without technical expertise. OpenText AppWorks, a low-code development platform, helps government agencies worldwide build smart apps. The developers do not need coding knowledge.

4. Resistance to change

One factor for government departments’ lackadaisical attitude to the cloud is resistance to change. Resistance to change remains strong even in the private sector, where employees shake up the cosy status quo into an uncertain future. Such resistance remains more pronounced in the government sector.

The solution to overcome resistance to change is the same as for general businesses.

Communicate with stakeholders, including employees. Convince them of the benefits of cloud adoption.
Identify champions who have influence. Make such champions sell the change in their sphere of influence.

5. Integration challenges

Often, cloud hesitancy is due to the technical incompatibility of legacy systems with the cloud. Governments typically have many legacy systems in place. Integrating the legacy system with cloud-based systems needs significant effort and resources. For government departures, such resources may not be forthcoming.

IT teams often get overwhelmed by provisioning and maintaining on-premises middleware infrastructure. Such a setup becomes expedient to avoid performance bottlenecks when migrating part of their system to the cloud. Government IT teams with cloud migration projects deal with hundreds of managed integrations. The limited budget and time compound the worries. Keeping on-premises infrastructure up and running negates the benefits of moving to the cloud. To overcome such bottlenecks,

Plan migrations. Consider the scope and determine the structure of the data once it moves into the new modern architecture.
Data stored in proprietary systems often have embedded logic and rules around its use. The movement of such data to the cloud creates issues related to business rules. Government agencies must ensure that new cloud databases can perform just as well or better than the incumbent system.
Conduct health assessment to ensure apps and data are fit for cloud migration. Look at technical issues, migration costs, risks, and complexity of the transfer. Many agencies overlook the cost and effort to re-orchestrate the data to work in cloud environments.
Tie up with cloud service providers with a track record of enabling seamless integrations.

OpenText partners with Amazon Web Services to deliver information management solutions to governments. OpenText’s Cloud for Government enables secure storage of electronic documents with robust security. Opentext offers content capture, storage, organisation, archiving, records management, imaging and other content functionality. AWS provides breadth, reliability and scalability.

OpenText Extended ECM for Government, a digital file system, manages content lifecycle. The tool brings government agencies out of legacy paper-based processes. The solution integrates into popular applications such as Microsoft 365, SAP, and Salesforce, enabling seamless integration while maintaining strict compliance.

The majority of government cloud programmes are long-term endeavours. Moving on-premises data and accompanying infrastructure to the cloud often takes several years. Success depends on getting the basics right and sustaining the program for the long haul.

Here are the key cloud computing trends for 2023.

Supriyo Sircar

Supriyo has over 30+ years of industry experience and is currently a hands-on entrepreneur running DigiLeap Technologies, a specialist in RPA and in RPA Applications, providing RPA technology project outsourcing as well as staffing services on several RPA products and Diligent line of Banking Compliance products for Enterprise KYC and Identification and Verification. Earlier, Supriyo served as the CEO of Asia Pacific in Polaris, a BFS Technology specialist company based in Singapore and had also headed BFS Strategy and Large Deals based in London, for Virtusa, post Polaris’ acquisition by Virtusa. Prior to this, he was at Scandent Singapore (acquired by XchangeInc – now DXC) and BMC Software in Singapore, Asia and Houston, USA, as well as in Remco Americas, Houston and Unify Corporation across various roles in Sales, Presales, Consulting and Technology Mgmt. Supriyo enjoys independent consulting and is always happy to provide technical advice at SupriyoS@digileap.net.