Canadian Government Executive - Volume 25 - Issue 02

14 / Canadian Government Executive // April/May 2019 innovation I n the private sector, the cloud is now the new normal for businesses looking to innovate to better serve their customers. Governments in Canada are taking a more mea- sured approach, but there’s a clear rec- ognition that cloud adoption is the key to modernizing service delivery, with end- less opportunities to innovate and add new value for Canadians. We live in a service-on-demand culture where we can access what we need, when we want it, on any platform we choose, from our phone to our watch to our cars, even our fridge or microwave. People are looking for that level of experience from government. Behind the scenes, govern- ment needs to deliver those services with the agility and speed necessary to keep pace with changing legislation and evolv- ing service offerings. That’s where the cloud comes into play. Since putting its Cloud-First Adoption Strategy into action in 2018, the cloud has helped the Canadian government take on more of a fast-moving, scrappy startup mindset. Agility Rather than having to wait up to six months to manage procurement acquisi- tions and secure approvals, leveraging the cloud allows government organizations to quickly develop and roll out new applica- tions. Teams can experiment and innovate more quickly and frequently. If an experi- ment fails, simply de-provision those serv- ers without risk. In fact, the Government of Ontario mi- grated its website, Ontario.ca, to AWS in order to provide the province’s 14 million citizens with clearer, quicker and more reliable services – whether that’s renew- ing your health card, registering a new small business or finding out what tax credits might be available to your family. By shifting to the cloud, the government team re-imagined the public service web- site – it stopped going down, they put a disaster-recovery solution in place and they can now scale their computing re- sources up or down based on their needs, all without requiring an expensive infra- structure purchase. cloud for innovation Cost Savings Whether it’s the public or private sector, saving money is a key consideration when adopting cloud-based IT infrastructure. With the cloud, government organizations can trade capital expenses for variable expenses, paying for IT as it is consumed. The low, pay-as-you-go pricing model helps governments lower IT costs, all the while freeing them to experiment and build new solutions that address pressing challenges. Genuine innovation is rarely the result of an “a-ha” moment. More frequently, it is the culmination of years of experi- menting – and failing. For governments, testing and failing with no guarantee of success is slow, expensive and often not palatable to constituents. These risks often deter government from investing in experimentation in the first place. However, through the cloud, these same government agencies are empowered to “fail fast” and accelerate the pace of in- novation – in a secure environment and without large upfront costs. Government is looking to the