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Scottish Government aims to boost national cloud take-up

31/12/19

Mark Say Managing Editor

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The Scottish Government’s Digital Directorate has set up a Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE) and a Cloud Community for the country’s public sector.

It said the move has been made to help organisations realise the benefits of cloud and to share best practice in the delivery of cloud based public services.

It also indicated plans to publish a report in January on the benefits, along with a new strategy, then develop an adoption framework for public authorities.

In a blogpost the Cloud Community said its first meeting has taken place, providing feedback on public authorities’ priorities in the field.

The topic to emerge at the top of the members’ list was cost management, followed by a strong interest in SecDevOps (integrating security into DevOps) and automation, security architecture and infrastructure-as-a-code.

The meeting also revealed that only a few of the organisations had a clear cloud strategy and roadmap in place, with most either having a strategy in development or had completed it but not created a roadmap.

Similarly, only a few had the majority of their services delivered by cloud, with either having most systems on premises or a distribution between on-premise and cloud.

Slow on SaaS

This was accompanied by a limited interest so far in software-as-a-service, with most members using it for less than 30% of their systems and only a minority doing so for more than 60%.

Most of the organisations said they had some good cloud skills in-house, but with limited capacity and that training and, in some cases, recruitment is needed to strengthen their capabilities.

“Organisations have identified a lack of training for internal staff as one of the principle blockers to cloud adoption,” the Cloud Community said. “Knowledge, skilled and experienced staff are the cornerstone of any cloud adoption journey, and building skills requires both time, and an opportunity to practice them.

“After training, a lack of resources was highlighted as the second most substantial roadblock to cloud adoption. This is an organisation-specific issue but is generally caused by a shortage of budget across the sector.”

Among the future plans for the CCoE is the creation of a business case for funds of pilot projects. It said the relevant organisations have already been selected.

Image by Sergio Russo, CC BY 2.0

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