What the private sector can teach government about cloud computing

Cloud computing has been at the forefront of government IT strategies for many years. When cloud computing first became a thing in 2008, the government led the way, including NIST creating a definition of cloud computing. I worked closely with them then and watched the whole thing play out. The CIO of the United States at the time, Vivek Kundra, was driving a cloud-first strategy, and many agencies pledged that the cloud would be the future of government.

Then reality hit. Most agency budgets did not cover the cost of moving to the cloud, at least to the extent that was initially envisioned. There was some movement, but it was mostly in dribs and drabs, and many of the agencies I watched had no clear strategy. This is essentially not their fault; government procurement is complex, security is unique, and the road to the cloud, despite their dedication to the concepts, was not as fast or clear for them as for their commercial counterparts.

Of course, different types of governments saw differing amounts of success. Since they are smaller and nimbler, state and local governments drove to the cloud fast, often making mistakes. So did governments outside of the United States. The U.S. government made some progress, but again, without a well-devised strategy; they made huge mistakes they are fixing to this day.

The “cloud-smart” approach, as the cool kids call it, is emerging as the next evolution in technology strategies. This means prioritizing a nuanced view of where and how cloud computing delivers value. Enterprises have been refining this process during the past several years and governments are now beginning to embrace it fully. It’s nice to see we’re thinking more clearly about when to use public cloud providers.

Lessons from the private sector

Private enterprises have already experienced the folly of indiscriminate cloud adoption. The major public cloud partnerships that organizations announced 10 years ago to move all their applications and databases to the cloud are no longer an acceptable strategy. The initial stages of cloud adoption were driven by an almost revolutionary fervor that declared the cloud as the inevitable destination for all technology modernization. The rationale was simple: move everything to the cloud and reap the benefits. Indeed, the public cloud providers pushed a philosophy of “migrate first and ask questions later,” which caused many of these problems.

Wholesale migrations often led to unanticipated costs spiraling out of control or the discovery that legacy systems didn’t integrate smoothly with cloud environments. As a result, enterprises have pivoted toward hybrid and multicloud strategies, leveraging cloud-based and on-premises solutions, depending on the workload.

Business cases are now driving a more sophisticated view of cloud adoption, one that asks: Does moving this system to the cloud make good business sense? Are the long-term benefits worth the costs of re-engineering processes or redesigning the architecture? This pragmatic approach maximizes flexibility and minimizes cloud vendor lock-in.

What government needs to know

Like private organizations, many governments also wholeheartedly embraced a cloud-first policy. However, it has become evident that an overzealous focus on the cloud for all use cases doesn’t necessarily lead to success. The moment of reckoning has come, and both policymakers and government IT leaders recognize that intelligent decisions about cloud adoption must be guided by business value rather than hype. There, I said it.

Governments have realized that simply mandating cloud migration is not a magic bullet. They must evaluate their IT portfolios case-by-case, considering technical, financial, and strategic factors. Many criteria must be evaluated before a workload is declared a good fit for the cloud. Repatriation is common within government agencies, a normal response to moving the wrong workloads and data to the cloud. Many of the workloads initially migrated to the cloud are far too expensive to exist in a public cloud provider and should be moved back to other solutions, such as private clouds, traditional on-prem, managed services providers, or colocation providers.

Despite the potential for success with hybrid models, recent public sector strategies have often been rigidly cloud-first. Governments must take a page from the enterprise playbook. This means leveraging practices such as workload optimization, financial modeling for cloud costs, and building vendor-agnostic systems.

A cloud-smart government must also recognize the critical need for a talent shift. As governments move beyond simple cloud adoption to designing and managing integrated hybrid systems, there will be an increased demand for IT professionals skilled in cloud financial modeling, platform interoperability, and enterprise and cloud architecture. This means replacing, rehiring, and retraining staff—and not taking years to do it.

All sectors need a cloud-smart culture

Change on this level requires breaking the longstanding dichotomy of cloud versus on-prem and fostering a culture of platform neutrality. Leaders must emphasize that the decision to go cloud is not a question of trendiness but of optimizing processes in order to improve services and ensure fiscal responsibility.

Cultural resistance is one of the most significant challenges governments and enterprises face in transitioning from cloud-first to cloud-smart. For many agencies, the initial drive to embrace cloud computing was an opportunity to redefine themselves as digital innovators. However, organizations must adopt a different kind of transformation. Success should not be measured by the volume of systems moved to the cloud but by the business value those systems deliver.

The lessons learned by enterprises offer both warnings and blueprints, but governments must chart their path. Success will require enlightened leadership, stable IT teams, and a willingness to challenge entrenched habits and assumptions. Cloud-smart is not about abandoning the cloud (which is how I’m often taken when I write about this stuff) but about using it strategically. Govern intelligently and the cloud will follow. Please do better with our tax dollars.