Pushing more public services online and cutting back on expensive paper-based processes and civil servants has become an increasingly attractive option to many of the world’s cash-strapped national, regional and local governments. The US and UK administrations, in particular, have been championing online services for some time now, and the recent cloud phenomenon has added another dimension to this efficiency drive, given its ability to centralise services, government applications and compute power.

The UK, for example, estimates it could cut its data centres from many hundreds to around a dozen by building its own cloud architecture. Obviously any notion of putting government services online has enormous security implications, however. To get around these, the UK government is focusing on establishing private cloud infrastructure despite being approached by the likes of Google to use existing systems.

But while some in Europe may be reticent, the US federal government and many city authorities have opted to take advantage of the search giant’s existing cloud offerings. Tapping into this demand, Google announced its Google Apps for Government cloud service earlier this year, which guarantees that any data will not be held in servers abroad. “Google Apps for Government stores Gmail and calendar data in a segregated system located in the continental United States, exclusively for our government customers. Other applications will follow in the near future,” the company said in a statement.

Among other G8 nations, Canada is also investigating the potential of private government clouds, and due to its cool temperatures and low-cost green energy, it considers itself a prime location for cloud computing. Meanwhile, Japan’s government is planning to create a nationwide cloud computing infrastructure called the Kasumigaseki Cloud – named after a term for Japanese bureaucracy.

Data Feed

• The UK’s G-Cloud could cut data centre costs by $450 million per year and power consumption by up to 75%.

• South Korea is investing more than $500 million in cloud computing infrastructure for use by both the government and the local ICT industry.

• The City of Orlando claims to have made 60% savings in its IT budget by using Google Apps for Government.

• Google won a $7.25 million contract with the City of Los Angeles last year to power Google Apps for 34,000 municipal employees.