Keynote Freitag, 21. März 2014 ( 09.00 – 10.00 09.00 – 10.00 )

Towards a CLOUD Strategy enabling eID and Security for the Public Sector
Prof. Dr. DI Reinhard Posch, IAIK TU Graz

Abstract: CLOUD FIRST – US, UK and others adopt strategies setting priority to outsource government ICT into the Cloud. The reasoning behind is a higher level of abstraction enabling lower cost by a factor up to 10. Open data is adding further pressure towards this move. We are in a very early stage when it comes to cloud usage in the public sector.
While it is essential to take advantage of this development we need to set clear requirements and well defined measures. Besides ensuring the necessary skills for strategic ICT decisions the main „what ifs“ need to be answered:

what If data are no more available – availability and archiving
what if data (e.g. of citizen) get exposed – confidentiality and data location
what if there is a need for law enforcement – sovereignty

Measurable parameters need to be agreed monitored and confirmed.

To cope with this situation and to foster Cloud in government use the European Cloud Partnership has been brought into life and with the Cloud for Europe the findings will be „piloted“ in a pre competitive procurement process.
As a result a European CLOUD FIRST strategy could ensure that government requirements are met and procurement criteria well as define efficiency parameter values are defined. Such strategy only can be fully effective if European instruments follow „CLOUD FIRST“ ESF, ERF, CEF, .. and others should bind funding to  Cloud First in a way that procurement will happen with all criteria and parameters or better.

To ensure sustainability clear criteria and policy also needs to be referenced in Council and the tasks of the maintenance of Cloud First criteria needs to get institutionalized.