This week I had the honor of organizing and hosting the first in a series of Global Government Cloud Computing Roundtables. This first event was held in Ottawa, Ontario and was coordinated in partnership with Jennifer Meacher of Canada's Foreign Affairs and International Trade(DFAIT) and held along side the GTEC conference.

The purpose of this by invitation meeting was to provide an international forum for leading government CIOs and CTOs to discuss the opportunities and challenges of implementing cloud computing solutions in the public sector. Representatives from the GSA's Office of Citizen Services and Communications as well as a variety of senior officials from various Canadian government departments were in attendance. Attendees were eager to share insights into the opportunities and challenges facing cloud computing both in the Canadian Government as well as more broadly. Needless to say it was a lively discussion.

Jirka Danek, the Canadian Government's CTO (Public Works) outlined a detailed strategy for Cloud Computing within the Canadian Government (Full text posted below). For those of you that are unfamiliar with Public Works Government Services Canada. PWGSC is similar to the General Services Administration in the United States with a mandate to be a common service agency for the Government of Canada's various departments, agencies and boards.

During Danek's presentation he pointed to cloud services such as the apps.gov web site in the USA as a possible model to follow with in the Canadian government. He also indicated that the Obama administration has provided Canada with a strong role model in driving the adoption and the use of cloud computing within government. He also see's opportunities for developing new cloud centric policies for government agencies who still must segregate data and processes before they can be more broadly adopted into the cloud. Other areas he also raised concerns focused around interoperability, portability and the lack of standards as some of key aspects hurting government cloud adoption.

Read the original blog entry...