By Freya Purnell
Three years on from the release of the US Government’s ‘Cloud First’ Federal Cloud Computing Strategy, Accenture research reveals that agencies are struggling with organisational barriers to cloud adoption.
An Accenture Federal Services and Government Business Council report, title ‘The Road Ahead: 3 Years After Cloud First’, surveyed 286 federal executives regarding cloud services.
While respondents agreed that cost savings and budget reductions are the primary driers behind cloud adoption strategies, agencies are struggling to develop and implement those strategies, in part due to a lack of necessary staffing (cited by 69 per cent of respondents) and lengthy procurement processes (31 per cent).
Annette Rippert, who, as managing director, Technology Solutions, leads Accenture’s federal cloud work, said agencies should not be put off by difficulties in getting cloud initiatives off the ground.
“While there are initial challenges in the adoption of cloud computing, it holds the potential to play a major role in increasing government efficiency and service delivery,” Rippert said. “When properly executed, government agencies have much to gain in transitioning to the cloud.”
Under the strategy, US federal agency must evaluate cloud options before making new IT investments. However, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report shows that of 20 cloud migration plans submitted by agencies to the GAO in 2012, only one was complete. In fact, only 10 percent of agencies have migrated more than half of their IT portfolio to the cloud.
More than two-thirds of respondents said their agencies lack the necessary skilled staff to execute its cloud strategy and 31 per cent said they would need to hire at least one new employee. About half of survey respondents (45 per cent) said training is necessary to develop those skills, estimating that cost between $25,000 and $50,000.
Only 30 per cent of survey respondents are implementing cloud strategies, and only 4 per cent of those agencies are building new cloud environments. An additional 10 per cent are integrating new and legacy systems to a cloud platform and 4 per cent reported implementing “other” strategies. A full 58 per cent were not aware of any cloud strategy underway at their agencies.
Despite the challenges, the report found that federal executives see the benefit of cloud adoption and listed better data security, bigger storage capacity and reduced IT costs as the top three benefits. Surveyed executives expect email (40 per cent), agency performance data (34 per cent) and data analytics (36 per cent) to be most secure in the cloud.
