Government in the cloud

On 29 May 2013, the Australian Government released its national cloud computing strategy, which aims to promote the use of cloud computing to government agencies and the private sector.

The strategy notes that Australian small businesses and not-for-profit organisations lag behind their Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) counterparts in the use of online technology for several reasons, including:

• insufficient access to the necessary infrastructure to support sophisticated cloud services
• a lack of awareness of how to make best use of cloud computing, and
• a lack of confidence that some organisations and individuals have in adopting cloud computing services.