It discusses the perceived benefits and challenges of such computing environments, and highlights how governments around the world are beginning to adopt cloud.

Executive summary

How are governments planning for and adopting cloud? What are the challenges of cloud-enablement? How will the integration of cloud technologies disrupt the status quo of governance? More importantly, what are governments doing to ensure they get the most from their cloud investments?

These are just some of the questions that KPMG International hopes to answer with this report. Working in conjunction with Forbes Insights, close to 430 public-sector government executives from 10 countries were surveyed to learn more about their cloud strategies and expectations.

Key findings are as follows:

- Government adoption of cloud is happening slowly, but is poised to accelerate:
When it comes to exploring the opportunities of cloud, not surprisingly the public sector is well behind the private sector. Survey results find that the progress of government entities significantly lags that of their for-profit counterparts by 9 to 13 percent. Only 12 percent of government executives say that over 10 percent of their agencies’ overall annual IT resources are allocated to cloud in 2011. By the end of 2012, this figure is anticipated to more than double to 28 percent. Countries leading the way in cloud adoption are Australia, Italy and Denmark.

- The public sector has modest expectations of cloud:
Only 50 percent of government respondents expect to gain some cost advantages with cloud; only 28 percent expect it to fundamentally change their model for operations; and just 39 percent expect it to change interaction with constituents.

- Security remains the biggest concern, but certification would help:
Concern with security was cited by almost half of all government respondents (47 percent) as their most significant concern, only exceeding the private sector slightly at 44 percent. Among the largest government entity respondents of the survey, the figure rises to 56 percent, the highest level of concern cited by any group. However, almost 80 percent said they would be more confident if cloud services were certified by a government body.

This report examines the implications of these findings on governments, citizens, cloud service providers and IT leaders. Responses from the global business survey of 808 business executives are referenced to provide further context. Throughout, we combine the deep experience of KPMG member firms’ professionals with the results of a series of in-depth interviews that were conducted with government leaders from around the world.

The results provide insight into the current state of government cloud and offer an important benchmark for public sector organizations globally.

Download "Exploring the Cloud " (PDF - 48 pages) :
www.kpmg.com/Global/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/exploring-cloud.pdf