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Cloud Computing for Government

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

At a conference I attended recently on Cloud computing, an interesting debate

emerged on how can Cloud computing be used to help the social cause. How can it

be used to benefit the society at large? When it comes to society and social

upliftment, the first thing that comes to my mind are the various e-governance

initiatives that the govt has been taking over the past so many years.

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Lots of extremely good e-governance projects have been implemented, some of

which have even won the PCQuest Best IT Implementation Award. Many of these

projects were even considered for replication by other states. While this is a

good thing, it takes ages to execute, not only due to the bureaucratic hurdles

and red tape, but also because they have very large scale. The IT requirements

of such projects are very significant. So while the project planning time could

be cut down in replicating such projects, the IT deployment itself can take

ages. This is where cloud computing can really help.

Anil Chopra, Editor



anilc@cybermedia.co.in

If a project by a state Govt can be implemented in a private cloud, then it

could easily be offered to other states. The Govt of J&K has already set a fine

example of this, by using computing services from MP Govt's state data center to

offer citizen services. This saved the J&K Govt considerable cost and time to

roll out the services for its citizens.

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Now, there are already plans to setup state data centers for all states.

While this is a good initiative, it would be much more cost effective if the

front-runner states who've already set up their own data centers could share

their IT infrastructure to host e-gov projects of other states. The benefits of

this could be immense.

For one, e-gov projects could be rolled out much faster. Two, state Govts

that are yet to setup their own data centers would save immense costs in setting

up new data centers, which would then consume lots of power in an already power

deficient nation. Three, the states that host e-gov projects of other states can

earn by charging others on a pay-per-use basis.

Four, a successful and proven e-gov project deployed by one state could be

adopted by other states quickly and easily. Here, the proverbial wheel won't

have to be re-invented by the other states! Take the various state police

departments for instance. Many of them are considering to maintain criminal

records centrally, and provide their police force access to these records over

smartphones. If this system could be centralized in a cloud computing

environment, wherein the criminal case records of all states are maintained,

then tracking criminals would become much easier, even if a criminal moves off

to another state.

Cloud computing therefore has the potential to speed up various projects of

the Govt. The technology can save the Govt thousands of crores, which are

usually lost due to cost over-runs caused by project delays!

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