Ed Byrne

GovCloud Ireland Proposal

Posted on 18. Aug, 2011 by Ed Byrne in Cloud Computing, Ireland

Amazon Web Services announced that they have built a version of their Cloud Computing platform specifically for the US government. This makes a lot of sense – government agencies are both hugely security conscious about their data (rightly so) and also heavily controlled in terms of how they engage with outsourcing providers.

The Irish government have placed Cloud Computing firmly in their programme for government, although agencies to date have shied away (and been officially warned off!) from using Cloud services themselves.

I propose that the main controller of government IT – be it CMOD in the Department of Finance or the LGCSB or a combination – contract the building of ‘GovCloud’ in a dedicated area of a secure (or government owned) data centre.  Implement a Cloud Management Platform to allow local IT managers and users from all government agencies to provision their applications and servers from a web based control panel. This would address the compliance issues governments have with putting data off-site, and give them the benefit of Cloud Computing that businesses enjoy today.

The benefits:

• Consolidate all existing servers and data centres into one central place.
• Increase recovery and failover time as only one environment to administer and replicate.
• Massively increase efficiency by managing capacity and resource utilisation across ALL government servers rather than in many disparate departments with their own IT infrastructure.
• Reduce capital costs – no department needs to purchase their own under-utilised equipment – they can provision, upgrade or decommission servers from a web based control panel, instantly.
• Save money and time on maintenance and IT administration by centralising all IT infrastructure – redeploy IT staff to adding value to the governments IT agenda (ie: Open Data).
• Allow IT managers and users to provision their servers and applications in minutes, not weeks (no requisition order, no deliver wait, no installation time, no stock issues).
• Meter costs internally and charge-back usage to each departments IT budget so costs are understood and can be evaluated and managed at department level.

The end result is giving more control and flexibility to users, while massively reducing capital requirements and administration time, and still maintain the borders of a secure government network. All the benefits of Cloud Computing, with none of the downsides.

Naturally the government could build this themselves, in fact I would be surprised if they were not already looking at it. However would it not make more sense to make it a commercial project, and support local companies (companies IN Ireland, and Irish companies) and also support some startups (Enterprise Ireland supported Digital Mines for example – which I have some natural bias towards!)

Some benefits of making it a commercial project:

• Ireland is seen as a leader in Cloud Computing – with it’s own platform, delivered through a public-private partnership, and cements the country as ‘Cloud-friendly’.
• Commercial nature of the project means the companies involved may be able to bring this model to other European countries and increase export revenue.
• It furthers Ireland’s ambition to be seen internationally as a destination for Cloud investments and multinationals looking for a base in Europe where Cloud Computing is core to their business.

There’s no doubt there will be a Government Cloud in the near future in Ireland – I would just like to see us take this opportunity to lead the space by engaging with innovative startups and proven leaders in the space and build a commercially driven infrastructure-as-a-service platform.