U.K. Government to Create Country Wide Cloud Infrastructure

[Reuven Cohen]

Interesting developments from our friends in the UK today. The British
government's newly appointed chief information officer John Suffolk
has been be given new powers to sign-off all major IT projects with a
particular focus placed on the creation of country wide Cloud
Computing infrastructure. Details of the new strategy were released as
part of a Digital Britain report published earlier, which includes the
development of “G-cloud” – a government-wide cloud computing network.

The report highlights the development of a virtual Public Service
Network (PSN) with “common design, standards, service level
agreements, security and governance.” which goes on to outlined that
"all those government bodies likely to procure ICT services should
look to do so on a scalable, cloud basis such that other public bodies
can benefit from the new capability,”

“The Digital Britain report recommends that the government take the
necessary steps to secure that the Government CIO has a ‘double lock’
in terms of accountabilities and sign off for such projects. That will
secure government-wide standards and systems” Needless to say, the
need for cloud computing standards are now more important then ever
with the UK joining a growing list of countries either exploring or
activity building government sponsored clouds.

I should note I've been recently involved in similar discussions with
the Canadian government regarding a national cloud strategy and
platform. For anyone interested, I'm currently organizing a Canadian
Federal Cloud Summit for this October in Ottawa. I will also be
presenting the keynote at the upcoming Washington Cloud Standards
summit on July 13th.

More details on the Digital Britain report are available here
http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/5631.aspx

--

Reuven Cohen
CCIF Instigator

[Rao Dronamraju]

Great news!. Is it going to be called United Kloud?.

-----Original Message-----
From: cloud...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cloud...@googlegroups.com] On
Behalf Of Reuven Cohen
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 3:13 PM
To: cloud...@googlegroups.com
Subject: U.K. Government to Create Country Wide Cloud Infrastructure


Interesting developments from our friends in the UK today. The British
government's newly appointed chief information officer John Suffolk
has been be given new powers to sign-off all major IT projects with a
particular focus placed on the creation of country wide Cloud
Computing infrastructure. Details of the new strategy were released as
part of a Digital Britain report published earlier, which includes the

development of "G-cloud" - a government-wide cloud computing network.

[Alexis Richardson]

Thanks for this Ruv.

One problem with this (speaking as a UK guy) is that the UK government
is FaaKed.

Sad but true. It's not obvious wherefore change will come at the moment.

alexis

[Reuven Cohen]

From what I hear a lot of the excitement around Cloud Computing in the UK is coming from the work you and the other CloudCamp organizers are doing in London. I am amazed to see the influence these events seem to having around the globe.

Actually what I found most fascinating about the Digital Britain report was the numerous references to the United States technology policy and specifically Barack Obamaès latest IT mandate. See chapter 5 “Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy to compete in the digital age.”

 Maybe what the UK government needs a "Cloud Czar" to help guide the governments cloud strategy, my vote is for Alexis Richardson. ;)

Ruv

[Sam Johnston]

Reuven,

On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Reuven Cohen <r...@enomaly.com> wrote:

I will also be presenting the keynote at the upcoming Washington Cloud Standards summit on July 13th.

Ok so it says in the agenda you'll be speaking on our behalf:

8:45 - 9:20 Reuven Cohen (Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum): Report on May 6 Federal CIO Cloud Working Group Meeting including key concerns. Discussion of the Unified Cloud Interface (UCI) project

Did you write up the May 6 meeting somewhere, or are there meeting minutes available? Maybe you could share the key concerns with us assuming you haven't already done so. Also, will this event be broadcast? I know the July 15 event is but I have a U2 concert to tend to :|

Also an update on the Unified Cloud Interface (UCI) project would be handy - the use of RDF in cloud APIs is an interesting idea and one that's come up a number of times in the context of the Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) but the project hasn't shown any signs of life since March. Is it still alive?

If not then perhaps merging into OCCI would be a good way to tie it off... I see OGF's president will be presenting on behalf of the OCCI-WG at the same event and the SNIA guys (who we're already working with) are too. It's in all of our interests to have an open API succeed as the two alternatives are both effectively single-vendor initiatives - to that end we should all be working together.

Cheers,

Sam

[Ysun]

I'm working on a european research project SLA@SOI. (http://www.sla-at-
soi.org)
OCCI is still alive and it is trying to formalize the API.
http://www.occi-wg.org/doku.php

On Jun 17, 8:37 am, Sam Johnston <s...@samj.net> wrote:
> Reuven,
>
> On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Reuven Cohen <r...@enomaly.com> wrote:
> > I will also be presenting the keynote at the upcoming Washington Cloud
> > Standards summit on July 13th.
>
> Ok so it says in the

> agenda<http://federalcloudcomputing.wik.is/July_15%2c_2009>you'll be

[Reuven Cohen]

@Sam and @YSun,

I'd love an update on your cloud standards progress. I'll make sure to
include it in my preso.

r/c

--

[Geir Magnusson Jr.]

Why don't all three of you provide an update *here* for all of us?

geir

[Mazin Yousif]

... agree.

Mazin

-----Original Message-----
From: cloud...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cloud...@googlegroups.com] On

[John Suffolk (UK Gov CIO)]

Our approach to G-Cloud stems from the work we have been doing over
the past 3 years: Focus on getting desktop designs standardsied;
rationalise the morass of telecommunications nfrastructures into a
"network of network" under the Public Sector Network Programme;
rationalise the datacenteres; drive through the open source, open
standards and reuse strategy ; surround each of those indivudal
elements with the Green IT strategy and our Information Assurance
strategy. That gives us the ability to start moving towards cloud in
a sensible way. As part of this rather than having a shared services
in departments we will move them to the cloud so the sharing across
the public sector (more than 5 million people) can be even greater.
The open source, open standards and reuse policy provides an
interesting opportunity. How easy would it to build a Government App
Store? The european law on procurement for public sectors is complex
but if we can crack this we shift the paradigm again. More than happy
to listen to your views on this.

John

> > > CCIF Instigator- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Reuven Cohen]

John, First of all, welcome to the CCIF list, it is a real honour for us to have your insights.

I find the concept of a government app store particularly interesting. In my recent conversations with the US CIO council the concept of improved IT procurement through the use of web based services was a hot topic of conversation. A kind of Amazon EC2 meets the Apple App Store makes a lot of sense in distributed organization such as a large governmental agency.  One of the recurring theme was the lack of perceived security that such a deployment may have. This is especially true when considering a virtualized environment.

Another big point of contention has been within the aspects of standardization. I'm not speaking only about things such as standardized API's but also  common terminologies. A perfect example is the recent NIST cloud definition which has become the formal definition for any cloud based services or platforms being acquired in the US federal government. Before you can hope to embrace a cloud centric "network of networks" computing approach, you first need to have a consensus on how to describe the various aspects found within unique parts of the cloud. Semantic approaches may also help.

Personally, when thinking about cloud computing with in a governmental context, interoperability and open standards are a particularly good starting point with open source references deployments the logical next step afterward. At the end of the day, governments represents some of the largest consumers of technology on the globe and as such you have the power to mandate these sorts of requirements when either considering or actually developing the next generation of IT systems and platforms.

Reuven
CCIF Instigator

[Alexis Richardson]

John

As Ruv said - thank-you very much for posting to this list. It is
very interesting to be able to hear what you plan to do with G-Cloud
and 'government as a service'.

Please may I ask some questions?

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 3:24 PM, John Suffolk (UK Gov CIO)
<sh...@backforest.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Our approach to G-Cloud stems from the work we have been doing over
> the past 3 years: Focus on getting desktop designs standardsied;
> rationalise the morass of telecommunications nfrastructures into a
> "network of network" under the Public Sector Network Programme;
> rationalise the datacenteres; drive through the open source, open
> standards and reuse strategy ; surround each of those indivudal
> elements with the Green IT strategy and our Information Assurance
> strategy.

How does the "network of networks" work and how does it relate to
current telco networks such as BT? What sorts of open source and open
standards do you think are relevant here?

> That gives us the ability to start moving towards cloud in
> a sensible way.

Playing devil's advocate, is there no way to make use of existing
clouds without first achieving all of the above?

> As part of this rather than having a shared services
> in departments we will move them to the cloud so the sharing across
> the public sector (more than 5 million people) can be even greater.

That's obviously a very large number. By 'cloud' do you mean a single
provider? Would UK Gov be a provider in its own right? I'd
fascinated to hear more.

I'm assuming that (at least for now) things like the NHS data services
are not in scope.

> The open source, open standards and reuse policy provides an
> interesting opportunity.  How easy would it to build a Government App
> Store?

The technology is the 'easy' part here.

I suppose the first question is - who would be the natural early adopters?

Have you considered exposing services that could be used on any app
store / cloud? What is the "Government API"? If I could for example
check data that the public owns (eg, FOIA data such as, ahem, MP's
expenses) as easily as I can get info out of Google Maps, then I could
build useful apps from it.

> The european law on procurement for public sectors is complex
> but if we can crack this we shift the paradigm again.  More than happy
> to listen to your views on this.

If the G-Cloud or App Store were a way to manage RFPs and enable the
market to pitch applications to the Government as well as end
consumers, that might be a way to reduce your own costs via automated
discovery, greater transparency and better reach. This could
potentially decomplicate some procurement processes.

alexis

[Mazin Yousif]

... (echoing great to hear from you John) in addition to the points Alexis's raised

 

A)   How do you envision cloud to perform when your goal for universal broadband is mere 2Mbps by 2012 (Also I understood small charges will be levied on all existing fixed line telephone subscribers to achieve universal broadband – likely bad idea)

B)   The report does not mention Green IT or associated technologies. The only thing mentioned is “The Government is committed to a low carbon economy, with a legally binding target to reduce carbon emission,” whatever that means.

C)   Will there be real work to overhaul existing ancient legislation to make it fit for the digital age.

 

 

Thanks

Mazin

 

-----Original Message-----
From: cloud...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cloud...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Alexis Richardson
Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 9:21 AM
To: cloud...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: U.K. Government to Create Country Wide Cloud Infrastructure

 

 

John

[Pat Ransil]

John,

Very interesting initiative. There are not many organizations with the scale, expertise and budget to pull this off but governments can be in that category if they have the political will and/or public backing to see it through. A few questions:

 - Will your team be more of a standards setting body and coordinator/motivator or will you have staff actually building interfaces and operating huge datacenters?

 - Will you be modeling it after any current players or offerings? 

 - I see that using open source is an important goal. This will mean that you will want to accelerate development and productization of key open source projects. Will you do this by hiring people to work on these projects and contribute back to the community? Or by funding other teams or consultants to deliver specific feature upgrades?

 - Will you be focusing on IaaS?

 - Will you also be assisting sub-groups do their own SaaS or PaaS?

 - How will you be staffing the team? 

 

A key challenge will be to "choose the winners." The field is developing rapidly and it is very hard to predict where it will go. If one were to have made firm commitments to various approaches 18 months ago, inevitably, by now, you would want to change some of those choices. A big factor in your success will be your ability to be nimble, betting on a number of approaches and being able to change your bets as we all learn more. We have all seen numerous centrally planned technology initiatives (Japan's TRON comes to mind) that were going to change the world and did not live up to the initial intent. Modularization with standardized interfaces at the proper levels can help a lot by allowing market driven flexibility underneath the APIs. 

Pat

[Pat Ransil]

John,

Setting up a G-AppStore could drive a marketplace that promotes innovation while reducing time and expense. Some considerations:

 - Common requirements for all apps should be well documented. Things like data privacy, minimum security standards, geographic location of data storage, docs/support, ...

 - Testing/Certification will be important for some classes of applications. Will the G-AppStore do that in a "fee for service" model or will you let companies emerge as 'Trusted Testers' putting their 'seal of approval' on applications and letting each app purchaser decide how valuable the seal is from a specific company?

 - This could evolve into an automated RFP system, probably first for smaller projects. Could be a big win.

 - Current gov't procurement policies and practices favor local suppliers. The G-AppStore will make it easier for others to compete. This will cause pushback.

Many things to think about and then do. Could be a big win.

Pat

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 7:24 AM, John Suffolk (UK Gov CIO) <sh...@backforest.co.uk> wrote:

[John Suffolk (UK Gov CIO)]

Yes, interesting thoughts, but I wonder:

on the apple store does apple do any of that? I don't think so, but
the risk is on the consumer device if it doesn't work well. So is an
option with G-Cloud to have a zone that caters for apps with less than
perfect credentials? I know I will get howls on the security front
but that is a problem to be overcome not a barrier to start the
thinking.

Yes accept the point on documentation, standards etc.
As the data centres will be UK onshored so will all the data, so that
will be answered in the architecture.

I guess my thinking (and trust me lots more people with greater
knowledge of mine will need to design this, not me so the country can
sleep at night) is firstly some applications will just be core and if
a public body needs that capability they get it from the store. This
is important if we are to standardise, simplify and dramatically
reduce cost and delivery timescales. As ever the challenge will be
around getting people to standardise and simplify. Our open source,
open standards and reuse strategy is key to making this element work.

Some would be more opportunitistic. A supplier has a solution and
they want to make their solution available to public bodies who have
that, or a similar problem. Saas sounds like a sensible model here,
would likely need to be open source because of european procurement
rules btut we will check that out.

I like you idea about the RFP. One of the things I have talked to
colleagues about is the whole web 2.0 world. It seems perfectly
logical to me to post the business problem on line, use the "universe"
to hone the problem, gather data, truly coalesce around the real
problem(s) and then begin to highlight solutions. The Gov App Store
forever known as "G-AS":-) could be a location for some of the
solutions.

On Jun 18, 6:58 pm, Pat Ransil <pat.ran...@gmail.com> wrote:
> John,Setting up a G-AppStore could drive a marketplace that promotes

> > > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

[Pat Ransil]

John,

Yes, there can be different zones in G-AS that have different levels of certification/testing/requirements. Someone will have to decide which apps go in which zone so having objective criteria could be helpful. There could also be filters or tags controlled by people at individual agencies to indicate recommendations of that agency. I would guess that different agencies/departments will have different needs and want to have a way to indicate which applications they recommend/allow for certain purposes. There are big gains to be had in reducing fragmentation but I do think there will need to be some flexibility.

Pat

[John Suffolk (Government CIO)]

Dear all thanks for all the comments, or should I say questions. I
thought it might be worth just detailing the approach we have been
following over the last 3 years to set the context: Sorry it is a bit
long.

The strategy has ten strands:

1. Standardise and simplify the desktop. Stop reinventing the design
wheel, commoditise what should be commodity. Drive down price, drive
up usability, capability, quality
2. Standardise, rationalise and simplify the plethora of networks.
Build with the telecommunications industry the “Public Sector Network
(PSN). An open market approach to joined-up secure networking for the
Public Sector. Secure, ubiquitous, service model based and a price
some 30% lower than we pay today.
3. Rationalise the data centre estate. Most are outsourced but they
are in scope. Reduce from the central government 130+ to c9-12.
Design a data centre eco system that is scalable, secure, green and
economical.
4. Deliver against the Open source, open standards and reuse strategy
I published in February. Buy at the “crown” not at an individual
public body; treat proprietary software the same as open source (as in
it should be available to all Public Servants); level the price
comparison so full entry and exist cost to use the software must be
taken into account. http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/cio/transformational_government/open_source.aspx.
Let me have your thoughts via http://writetoreply.org/ukgovoss/.

Surrounding those four elements are two “wrapper” strategies:

5. Green IT: For each of the elements detailed above they have a Green
IT wrapper. I published this strategy in June 2008. You can read it
at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/cio/greening_government_ict.aspx.
Each of the elements must conform to our Green IT strategy.
6. Information Security and Assurance: We published a National
Information Assurance Strategy in June 2007 and the Data Handling
Requirements in June 2008. Together with the Security Planning
Framework that was published a few months ago form the basis for our
information security requirements. I chair the Information Assurance
Delivery Group and are accountable for helping Public Bodies conform
to theses requirements, so security is uppermost in my mind.

This is where Government Cloud or “G-Cloud” comes in. With the
elements detailed above we can begin to start the design and thinking
about the establishment of a UK onshore, private G-Cloud. In essence
infrastructure as a service, middleware/platforms as a service and
software as a service. In relation to Saas I can’t see any reason why
we couldn’t establish a Government Application Store (“G-AS” for want
of a better code).

These six strategic elements have four other supporting strategies:

7. Shared Services: This is about ensuring that wherever possible we
share everything... not just HR, Finance etc, but architectures,
designs, solutions, people etc. We have moved from few users of
shared back office services 3 years ago to many hundreds of
thousands. The G-Cloud moves this thinking forward so rather than
departments hosting a shared service for others, the applications are
put into the cloud and saas kicks in.
8. Reliable Project Delivery. This is all about starting the right
projects, executing them to successful completion and crucially
delivering the social outcomes and business benefits. We have already
made substantial progress in ensuring central government departments
utilise portfolio management and best in class benefits realisation
processes.
9. Supplier Management. Central Government is c65% outsourced and
therefore having professional skills to deal with suppliers and having
the most appropriate relationship with them is important. In this
supporting strategy we have already worked with the ICT trade
association, Intellect, to add additional tools to help the
procurement process as well as implementing a Common Assessment
Framework where assessment are made of projects undertaken by
suppliers against a Common Assessment Framework! All the projects for
a particular supplier are aggregated together to give insight into
strengths and weaknesses. Action plans are then developed. The
suppliers also provide feedback on the client in a similar way
10. Professionalising IT Enabled business change. Last but very much
not least, the bedrock in fact, is growing the knowledge, skills and
experience of our IT Professionals for which I am the Governments Head
of Profession. We have about 50,000 IT professionals in the Public
Sector. This strategic strand focuses on using the Skills Framework
for the Information Age as a competency model for our ICT
professionals. It is about personal growth and capability.

So in as few words as I can get it, this is the ten strategic strands
we are following. They all work together and are all driven via the
UK Government CIO Council. Some are more advanced than others, and
clearly sitting beneath these strands is a whole lot more work and
detail.

The posts also talked about language and getting that right and
consistent. I couldn’t agree more. I seem to spend a fair amount of
my time doing two things: firstly acting as a marriage guidance
counsellor – bringing parties together; separating them when they are
fighting; getting them to use the same words to mean the same things
etc. The second thing is one of dating agent – someone has a problem
and I date them with someone who has a solution. Key thing about
language here is that we tend to apply a lot of labels to our problem
and the solution provider uses a different set of labels for their
solution. There is no easy fix to the language issue, but the more we
talk, and listen (in at least equal quantities) the better.

Someone asked the question is the 2mbps a barrier. I can’t see any
reason why. If we look at what many people do in their day jobs they
don’t need 2mbs today. UK Government online transactions have
increased enormously over the last 3 years as almost all services went
online. The speed hasn’t been a barrier so far.

The final point was to my question about the Government Application
Store (“G-AS”). The Public Sector will own many computer
applications. To get full value, these could be moved into the G-AS.
I think the Apple App Store is truly innovative and again for me
creating something similar has attractions of speed, simplicity,
innovation, cost effectiveness etc. I am still mulling over the
points on certification of apps on the basis of if I can secure the
infrastructure (and run the app in a virtualised world to protect the
rest of the cloud), and the commercial model is say saas, if it
doesn’t work should we care?

One final question for the time being. We are at the early stages of
our thinking as you can see from my mutterings. Would it be possible
to design a Government Cloud and a Government Application Store in a
web 2.0 environment bringing in communities to detail the
requirements, think though the issues, the designs and solutions etc?

Thoughts and comments welcomed as ever. I have also posted this on my
blog.

ps have changed my email address from the one I use on the farm...


On Jun 20, 7:17 am, Pat Ransil <pat.ran...@gmail.com> wrote:
> John,Yes, there can be different zones in G-AS that have different levels of

[Mark England]

An interesting thread..

With regard to a G-AS one of the key challenges will be the
interoperability. Very few applications provide functionality within
an isolated context and the interfaces required are a critical element
of the App Stores approach. Within the Apple iPhone API the
specification for linking an application into the AdressBook for
example, one of the key persistent data stores needed by developers
within the application environment is specified and maintained by
Apple. It is at this level, whereby the operating environment and its
interfaces will be critical. John poses the question: “should we care
if the application doesn’t work?” That is the key aspect from my
perspective as an iPhone user. When I pay for an application there is
surety that it will integrate and work without adverse effect on other
applications. Government work with regard to the Schools
Interoperability Framework (SIF) and the Spine (HL7) and the
strategic link to the “open standards” theme is so critical to the
utility of this approach, and I think it would be hard to have an
uncertified app store. Those that govern the store will need some sort
of quality assurance, and even maintenance of interoperability. I
appreciate that the benefit of buying at the crown level is optimal
for the public sector but see the interoperability challenge as a
vital element of policing a G-AS.

As someone with a legacy in-house data centre (acute NHS Trust)
seeking robust cloud services, I have been following the G-Cloud
developments with interest and have been looking to frame a tender to
incorporate taping into any evolving G-Cloud data centre ecosystems.
Are these developments formalising to the stage that an organisation
requiring critical services could let contracts?

Mark


On Jun 22, 4:59 pm, "John Suffolk (Government CIO)"

<js.we...@johnsuffolk.co.uk> wrote:
> Dear all thanks for all the comments, or should I say questions.  I
> thought it might be worth just detailing the approach we have been
> following over the last 3 years to set the context:  Sorry it is a bit
> long.
>
> The strategy has ten strands:
>
> 1.      Standardise and simplify the desktop.  Stop reinventing the design
> wheel, commoditise what should be commodity.  Drive down price, drive
> up usability, capability, quality
> 2.      Standardise, rationalise and simplify the plethora of networks.
> Build with the telecommunications industry the “Public Sector Network
> (PSN). An open market approach to joined-up secure networking for the
> Public Sector.  Secure, ubiquitous, service model based and a price
> some 30% lower than we pay today.
> 3.      Rationalise the data centre estate.  Most are outsourced but they
> are in scope.  Reduce from the central government 130+ to c9-12.
> Design a data centre eco system that is scalable, secure, green and
> economical.
> 4.      Deliver against the Open source, open standards and reuse strategy
> I published in February.  Buy at the “crown” not at an individual
> public body; treat proprietary software the same as open source (as in
> it should be available to all Public Servants); level the price
> comparison so full entry and exist cost to use the software must be

> taken into account.  http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/cio/transformational_government/open_....
> Let me have your thoughts viahttp://writetoreply.org/ukgovoss/.

>
> Surrounding those four elements are two “wrapper” strategies:
>
> 5.      Green IT: For each of the elements detailed above they have a Green
> IT wrapper.  I published this strategy in June 2008. You can read it

> athttp://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/cio/greening_government_ict.aspx.

> ...
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -