Harnessing Public Cloud Opportunities in the Government Sector

Public cloud, a digital services platform, can enhance government operations and support it in overcoming the challenges it faces in an increasingly complicated environment. Public cloud offers on-demand delivery of computing power, database storage, applications, and other IT resources through a cloud services platform via the internet with pay‑as-you-go pricing.

Deloitte Access Economics’ research into government sector use of public cloud includes analysis of the sector’s performance relative to its policy aspirations, a new survey of federal and state government sector decision makers, and case studies with agencies that have successfully made a move to using public cloud.

The benefits of public cloud are well recognised. Government sector decision makers identified the main benefits as being improved agility in terms of being able to better scale operations as needed, such as during times of peak demand for agency services or applications, improved productivity, for example, achieved through time savings in analysing data or in streamlining processes, and improved services, reliability and data security (see Chart i). Further, public cloud is a platform for the future, providing a foundation for a range of emerging technologies ranging from artificial intelligence to virtual reality.