For Governments there are certain limitations when they want to use current cloud models. If they want to fully relay on Private Cloud, they might have limita. all data related to Government must store inside the country). Hybrid model could be a good option but they have limitation in security and capacity management. Therefore, governments need a new cloud model known that it could be called ‘Government Cloud’.

 

What is Government Cloud?

 

Government Cloud is a cloud model that gives ability to governments to provide cloud services to their government agencies. It also give ability to governments to have a better control over their national security and protecting their citizens in the cyberspace. It also gives freedom to people in a country while enforce law and regulations within the country.

 

How to Build a Government Cloud?

 

Governments need to perform an assessment on cloud usage for their employees and their people and base on result of assessment, come up with a cloud design which compliance with privacy and security roles and regulations. In the assessment the following should take into consideration:

• Software tools being used in government agencies for their jobs and their relations to cloud. Public cloud tools like Skype, Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft Office 365, etc. Private cloud tools such as Microsoft Lync, Microsoft Exchange Server, Windows Server 2012 R2, etc.

 

• Software are being used across the nation by people and their degree of compliance with law and regulation of country. For example, people might use YouTube, Skype, LinkedIn, etc. for their daily life and should see how well these public cloud services follow law and regulation of country.

After assessment, they will come up with list of requirements and they should decide for government agencies what degree of private cloud is going to be used. For example, government might want to implement fully private cloud and in that case transform all public cloud services which are being used in government agencies to private cloud service  and create a central data center to manage and provide service to all government agencies. In this case, all government agencies across the country would use Microsoft Lync for communication which is fully control by government itself inside a data center known as Government Cloud. It is a center that governments will provide services to all its agencies. In this case, instead of subscribe to an external cloud provider, the government would build its own data center and provides services to government agencies.

There are many services that are being provides outside countries which are not compliance with government law and regulations. For example Twitter, Facebook, YouTube are being used as a center to get involve in certain political activities which result to being blocked in certain countries. The problem is in such a case, the government would block the website entirely and even the useful contents like videos or discussions about learning or promoting new technology will be blocked or it might take a long time to remove certain offensive contents from these websites (it might require formal  legal procedures which is time consuming). In this case, those services will register in government and they should provide ability to government to block certain contents in their website and request to remove it from the main website. In this case, they provides their content after it been validate by governments in government cloud and then after pass through government filter, they will be provided to users through Internet Service Providers (ISPs) within a country. This will give ability to governments to only block contents against the country instead of blocking the entire website.

 

Usage of Government Cloud

 

The entire government would have a access to a big cloud which is use internally and it provide services to all government agencies such as Ministries, Embassies, Security Agencies, etc. It is scalable and secure and would fully control by government and in time like elections which many people might need to use a certain cloud services, it provides those services. It provides central place to fully protect all government agencies and provide central support. For example latest update could be patch to all government agencies and they would have the latest technologies. All communication between agencies being kept inside country and enhance national security. People could get access to public cloud services without getting block from specific service due to political issues. Most governments would block an entire service or website instead of blocking offensive contents.