Aussie gov web wonks declare clouds have grey areas The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO), has raised legal and contractual issues as key concerns in government adoption of cloud computing. The office has released a consultation draft, "Cloud Computing Strategic Direction Paper, Opportunities and applicability for use by Australian Government", and has …
As usual, a "Strategic Direction Paper" is released years after individual agencies have been working out their own solutions to the issue (some better than others). Sigh...
And as usual, said direction paper does little other than point out the bleeding obvious pitfalls, and bleeding obvious benefits, without clear guidelines on how to avoid the former in order to get to the latter. Deeper sigh...
I'm in an analagous situation in a nationally funded, state administered health program. In early 2004, we started lobbying the central Dept Health and Ageing to develop national guidelines and standards on implementation of a particular type of medical technology and related information systems. "No resources, no subject matter knowledge, do you really need this?, go away, I can't hear you , la la la lalalala, did somebody say something?".
So we go our own way and start implementing in 2005. Other states start implemeting from 2006, one by one reinventing the wheel. By late 2009, most states have started implementing, and probably 70% of episodes are using the new technology. Lots of similar wheels, but all with slightly different incompatible parts.
In early 2010, central govt thinks it's time to develop some standards and strategic directions, and gets tech leads from each state together for a meeting. In late 2010, they come back with a strategic direction paper for endorsement which addresses 10% of the interoperability requirements, with the remaining 90% explicitly "out of scope". When asked why the 90% was out of scope, response comes back "horse has bolted, too hard basket, trying to address would mean likely failure to achieve even 10%".
Why is it that saying "I told you so!" doesn't make the pain go away?
ANON because I still have to work with the feds...
...some government twonks are thinking clearly.
Cloud computing, while a marketing buzzord, is also a grave threat to privacy and security. As is rightly pointed out, the Patriot Act in the US could compromise Australian information security. Hopefully this report will help our politicians to see what a dangerous proposition cloud computing really is and keep operating government servers on our own turf.
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