Page 19 - DPSA_SDR Vol12 no1 A4.indd

Transforming how

government employees

will work

“As part of its IT modernization strategy, the American administration is making the use of commercial cloud services a top
priority,” reports Steven Boberski.

The Report to the President on Federal IT approach, serving as ‘low-hanging fruit’ for a government agency, providing a
Modernization, issued by the American for government IT managers looking number of benefits including:
Technology Council, calls for agencies to pursue a path toward cloud-based
to move to commercial cloud services services. Being a logical candidate to • Effi ciency and cost savings
wherever possible – part of a ‘cut and move into the cloud, many government
invest’ strategy that reallocates funding agencies have already performed Upgrading collaboration systems
associated with maintaining legacy email migrations and are using cloud- does not require a major overhaul
systems to more modern technologies, based systems. In addition to email, of equipment; in fact, agencies can
cloud solutions and shared services. collaboration systems meet the criteria repurpose their existing hardware.
To meet these requirements, agencies for migrations – low-cost, quick and Additionally, the cloud model offers
need to identify the upgrades that will efficient – making it another ideal the financial advantage of a fixed
enable them to modernise their networks candidate for governments to upgrade, monthly rate based on user count.
quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively. particularly those agencies that have Agencies can virtually eliminate
Freeing up funds that are currently already migrated their email systems. unnecessary spend while enabling
consumed by legacy systems can have After email, collaboration is the second a scalable model that allows them
a major impact. Today, it is estimated most common cloud workload. to increade or decrease users as
that 80% of government IT budgets go needed.
towards maintaining legacy systems, Without completely disrupting their
many of which are ‘decades old’. operations and uprooting their entire • Modern technology
annual budget, a government agency
Low-hanging fruit can work toward IT modernisation With a cloud-based system, the
objectives with a simple upgrade to latest collaboration technology
their collaboration systems. While the is always at the users’ fingertips.
How can agencies address this investment is minimal, the result of such
inefficiency quickly? Migrating their an upgrade can have a major impact Upgrades and maintenance are
email systems to the cloud is one popular included, so the burden doesn’t

Volume 12 No. 1 of 2018 | SERVICE DELIVERY REVIEW 17