Lessons from International
G-Cloud Experience
Andrew Stott
formerly UK CIO & Director, data.gov.uk
Senior Consultant, World Bank




                                                @dirdigeng
Azerbaijan                      andrew.stott@dirdigeng.com
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6 May 2022 v1.0
Basis of Study

 United States of   10 year track record
 America            Clear Strategies
 United Kingdom     Clear Results –
 Singapore          ‒ What worked
 Italy              ‒ What didn’t work
 Moldova            Transparency




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Other countries?

Some other countries claim “cloud�, but …
  Lack of public evidence of implementation
  and results
  Seem to be provider-led
  Seem to be principally server virtualisation
  Do not seem to meet NIST cloud definition
  ‒ On-demand provisioning
  ‒ Resilience
  Cloud neither necessary nor sufficient to
  achieve stated business objectives
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Objectives and Expected Benefits

 Clear and concrete business objectives
 Main benefits: resilience, agility, innovation
 … and also costs
 Benefits mainly in migration of individual
 systems to suitable cloud-based services
 Benefits not dependent on a solely single-
 cloud solution
 Cloud neither necessary nor sufficient for
 interoperability & digital government
 Also: Better hosting of unmigratable systems
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Architecture and Services

 Multiple data centers for resilience
 Private cloud mainly for
  ‒ IaaS (compute & storage) for sensitive applications
  ‒ SaaS – government-specific common services
 Public cloud for commodity IaaS and generic
 SaaS services
 Consolidation of unmigratable services into
 small number of secure data centers

Cloud is only a small part of the Enterprise
Architecture needed for digital government
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Sourcing

 Many countries allow use of qualified public
 services as well as a secure private cloud
  ‒   Cost and services benefits
  ‒   Agencies have choices
  ‒   Clarity of focus for private cloud
  ‒   Stimulate local IT industry
 Private sector partnering for private cloud to
 gain skills and experience and possibly to
 avoid up-front capital costs
 Migration of applications often requires
 external help too
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Migration

 Prioritisation, ‘low-hanging fruit’ & early success
 “Cloud First� for new systems and refresh of
 existing systems is usually core
  ‒ IaaS for line-of-business systems
  ‒ SaaS (or BPaaS) for some common business
    services
 Expedite migration of systems at risk
 Re-host unmigratable systems
 Migration takes a very long time


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Leadership and Governance

 “[Cloud is] primarily an organisational and
 cultural change, not a technological one�
 Governance structures need to represent
 users and their interests
 Cost-reflective and predictable financial model
 Agree minimum standards, cloud or not cloud
 Delegate decision making
 Allow exceptions: “Comply or Explain�
 Engage, up-skill, re-orientate and support
 user agency IT staff to drive migration
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Program Management

 Program Office separate from provider(s)
 Collect accurate data on existing data centers
 and applications
 Provide guides, checklists, model processes
 for user agencies
 Prioritise delivery by stakeholder interests
 Agree realistic targets, allowing exceptions
 Manage by numbers
 Show more flexibility on “when� than on “if�
 Earn reputation for success, and build on it
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