Steve Hodgkinson, Research Director, Public Sector Technology

The New South Wales state government in Australia is taking visionary but practical steps towards cloud services adoption via a program of pilot projects. The projects recognize the need to treat cloud services as an emerging trend to be investigated and evaluated hands-on. It is a practical organizational learning exercise, not an ideological quest or a whole-of-government “grand plan”.

Cloud services adoption is best driven at an agency-by-agency level with a focus on the promotion of early adoption, the realisation of business benefits, and the rapid propagation of lessons learned and successful solutions across agencies as confidence is gained.

Governments need to get hands-on with cloud services

Government adoption of cloud services is nascent but growing. Cloud services require a change in mindset about how to approach the sourcing and management of ICT capabilities and how to apply them to drive business transformation …