Four in five (83%) of civil servants have said their experience of cloud computing in the public sector was ‘negative’ or ‘poor’, according to the latest research from not-for-profit CSP Eduserv.
The research, the latest monthly update produced by the government cloud provider, found that nearly half (40%) of those who’d suffered bad experiences were hindered by not being able to access the right data or applications, with one in 10 adding their ability to do their job was disrupted by new cloud services.
The results were collated in a paper entitled ‘Delivering Cloud First’ and polled over 800 civil servants to find out the state of the UK government’s cloud first policy – and found that efficiency trumps innovation.
Most cloud adoption (60%) has focused on entry level infrastructure as a service (IaaS) solutions, while the primary driver for adopting cloud remains improving operational efficiency, according to 57% of respondents.
Andrew Hawkins, government sales director at Eduserv, noted: “Of course efficiency is important, but we need to make sure that cloud computing isn’t just seen as an opportunity to deliver cheaper IT bills, but as the best way of delivering transformation in the effectiveness of government departments and the services they deliver.
“Looking forward to the second year of Cloud First, the real measure of success shouldn’t just be the volume of sales going through G-Cloud 5 and 6, but the extent to which the services are being bought in order to deliver this strategic transformation,” he added.
Last month’s survey results found that government departments weren’t ready for migrating to the cloud, with more than half (51%) saying their organisation didn’t have the technical skills, with three quarters (75%) saying the benefits of cloud computing were a mystery to their company.
This purported ‘skills gap’ was confirmed when CloudTech spoke with Interoute CTO Matthew Finnie, who claimed that some of the ‘cynicism or concern’ is actually masking a skills deficit in cloud.
Plenty of governments are actively pursuing a cloud-first strategy, from the UK to the US and Australia, as this publication has previously examined. Whether governments are actually ready, however, is a different matter.
