The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on Monday released a whitepaper on the adoption of cloud computing by the government. The report said that through opting cloud computing model, the government can offer better citizen services, without requiring the setting up of significant IT infrastructure.

According to CII’s latest report, titled “The Indian Cloud Revolution”,  “Cloud based services can be leveraged by the government to launch new e-Governance initiatives quicker and with lower overhead costs. A common cloud platform will also enable local governments and other public agencies to adopt e-governance for better citizen services, without requiring the setting up of significant IT infrastructure.”

“Globally, the adoption of cloud has increased over the years, and growing at a rapid pace. Cloud can drive the inclusive growth agenda by providing platform to scale the reach of education, healthcare, financial services, entrepreneurship and governance among other areas. This whitepaper evaluates the opportunities and challenges that is faced in India’s roadmap for cloud adoption,” said Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII.

He added “CII believes that Cloud Computing as a disruptive technology and business model offers an accelerator approach for economic growth as it connects people to data, information and computing resources anywhere and anytime”.

The Cloud provides public agencies with distinct advantages to meet new ‘open’ Government requirements. Cloud services make available an environment that provides Government agencies with access to a shared pool of easily usable computing resources (such as hardware and software). Government bodies across India currently operate with moderate to low level of IT involvement – many departments having undertaken computerization in the past decade.

The Cloud has potential to transform not only business ecosystem but also day to day challenges of Indian citizens including necessary services such as Healthcare and Education. The initiatives by Government with the enabling support by industry will facilitate cloud adoption in India as per this report.

The whitepaper emphasized that any cloud policy will have to take into account the data sovereignty and governance considerations and study the worldwide global practices relating to resolving jurisdictional conflicts. It highlights that from the data security perspective, the cloud’s fluid architecture presents the biggest challenge and may require an amendment in the current laws to harmonize jurisdictional conflict issues and may provide clear prescriptions on the security measures to be adopted. It also highlights that changes will also be required in the organizational security practices that provide for regular review/audit of critical cloud infrastructure.

Infrastructure development will be a key Government initiative that will provide the land, power, technology and human resource to establish India as a data management hub. Currently, India lags behind developed countries in terms of established data centers operating in the country. Economic benefits of having data management centers in the country are huge and the Cloud Policy will have to provide a clear vision to enable such an outcome.

Cloud not only addresses reach as well as quality issues in the education sector by low cost implementation of IT tools leading to qualitative improvement in educational content and delivery and by enabling remote education, Cloud can also enable services such as telemedicine to remote areas and can make healthcare affordable for masses in India, the CII report has aid.

The primary step towards enabling Cloud computing in Government is the formulation of a Cloud Policy. A Cloud policy will lay a foundation for a large scale adoption of the Cloud by various Government entities. Existing regulators such as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) or Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA), and Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) will have to be directed to develop guidelines keeping in mind how the Cloud can potentially affect the entities they regulate.

In essence, the Government needs to play a pivotal role in ensuring that Indian entities can take advantage of the Cloud revolution for economic growth without being encumbered by the challenges and risks arising from the Cloud. The Government needs to work on dual goals of, protecting interests of Indian entities in relation to risks from Cloud adoption and accelerating the adoption of Cloud in India. This will be possible only with cooperation between various government agencies and departments anchored by key ministries said the report.

With growing population, growth of entrepreneurship and the SME sector is a key to generate employment. Cloud with its ability to provide quick and easy provisioning of IT resources will only help accelerate the growth in the SME segment and setting up of new businesses. The key proposition of the Cloud is to transform the current IT infrastructure model from CAPEX (Capital Expenditure) based into a ‘Pay-as-you-go’ or OPEX (Operational Expenditure) based. This makes setting up IT infrastructure easier for statups and provides flexibility, scalability and ease of implementation to SMEs in particular according to the report.

KPMG and Amarchand Mangaldas & Shroff were the Knowledge Partners for this report.