GDS launch Public Sector Cloud Guide

8 Apr 2020 01:05 PM

The Government Digital Service (GDS) has published a range of guidance encouraging government organisations to adopt a more cross-functional approach to their cloud...

The Government Digital Service (GDS), working with the Government Commercial Function, has recently published a range of guidance encouraging government organisations to adopt a more cross-functional approach to their cloud strategies.

The guidance is intended to help public sector organisations:

Prior to publishing the guidance GDS held workshops of senior commercial and technical experts from across government. They discussed how they used cloud and the challenges they face, and organisations want the government to work with them to ensure they can make informed decisions about their cloud strategies, and advise them on how they should create and implement their roadmaps.

This led to several cross-government and cross-functional working groups being set up to focus on the most important issues facing organisations, these include hosting strategies, making the commercial case, commercial and technical lock-in, security, and operations, and the guidance has been produce on the back of the insights generated from those groups.

Each of these challenges are addressed in their respective sections in the guidance. The authors acknowledge that while technology moves quickly many pubic sector bodies are dealing with legacy technology. To help organisations manage this, GDS has provided user researched technical guidance to help make decisions on how and when to move away from legacy technology.

Henry Rex, techUK’s Head of Public Sector yesterday commented on the launch of the guidance: 

“It’s been seven years since the Cloud First policy was first published by the Government, so it’s great to see this new guidance published to ensure that Government bodies can make informed decisions for modern cloud strategies. techUK very much looks forward to working with GDS and Government departments to ensure that they can make most of cloud technologies and services.”

You can read the guidance in full here