Documents obtained with an access to information request indicate that the Government of British Columbia intends to potentially save hundreds of millions of dollars by moving public sector computer services into the cloud.
CloudBC is a new organization, administered by the B.C. Ministry of Technology, Innovation, and Citizens’ Services. It has been established to encourage and support the successful adoption of modern, cloud-based business and technology services across the broad public service. Although the specific strategy is still under development, CloudBC’s focus will be to support public sector organizations’ efforts to adopt services supplied by qualified third party vendors.
CloudBC is in the process of identifying very specific technology requirements. At GTEC 2015, a large annual conference that addresses technology specific to Canada’s public sector, Mike Larson, CloudBC chief operating officer said, “In BC, we’ve come up with some definitive language to tell companies how they’re going to deliver the service for us.”
The documents suggest that at least two data centres will be built and maintained by private vendors like Microsoft or Hewlett Packard. These are to be in strict compliance with CloudBC’s list of requirements. To ensure sovereign security of private information, these data centres must be located in Canada.
Contracts were to be in place by the end of March, 2016 but as of now, no contracts are signed between government and industry. Once the data centres are ready and vendors contracted, the successful third-party suppliers will provide “pay-as-you-go” cloud IT services to government agencies. Participating crowns, ministries, and departments will be encouraged to begin adoption of cloud computing services.
Government documents reveal that security and privacy are prime concerns. Legislation requires several of the B.C. agencies and crowns involved in the CloudBC initiative to maintain privacy of personal information like health records. The technology to be adopted must be capable of keeping private information secure while making public information widely available.
Huda Qasim, IT researcher at Yarmouk University notes that, “Cloud computing is said to be the way forward, offering… cost reduction and flexible and handy scalability. But along with these many advantages, the cloud computing environment suffers from many risks like security and privacy.”
CloudBC management intends to work with early adopters to “demonstrate quick wins” to the remainder of the pubic service and, thus, encourage conversion to cloud service in agencies that are initially reluctant. It is anticipated that efficiency, ease-of-use, and savings are to the be obvious incentives to change to cloud computing services.
In briefing notes from August 14, 2015 obtained with an access to information request, Larson notes several key observations from the business case. Cloud computing services are now mature; they are no longer unreliable. And, cloud computing is much more affordable than the traditional model of installing dedicated hardware in every participating organization.
The Cloud BC business case was creating in consultation with chief information officers from the B.C. government, six regional health authorities, and six major crown corporations – BC Hydro, Insurance Corporation of BC, WorkSafeBC, BC Lottery Corp, BC Ferries, and BC Pension Corp. These participating agencies combine to account for $3 billion in annual IT costs.
Elsewhere in the documents a 15 to 20 percent cost saving in estimated. If realized, this will save the Government of BC from $450 to $600 million dollars per year.
These savings are not certain. Again from his address at GTEC Larson notes, “There’s many reasons why we think we’re going to have problems.”
Moving to cloud computing, though, seems inevitable and it has either been adopted or is process in Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. Not to mention the Government of Canada.