62% of Singaporeans worried over privacy issues in cloud technologies

And about 48% of government respondents were apprehensive about security in cloud technologies.

According to a KPMG report Exploring the Cloud: a Global Study of Governments’ Adoption of Cloud, almost half, or 47 per cent, of 429 government respondents surveyed across 10 countries cited worries about security as the top obstacle to the implementation of cloud-based processes.  

Close to two-thirds, or 62 per cent, of Singaporean respondents also said that data security and privacy issues were the main challenges to the Government supporting the use of the cloud for all citizens in the country.

Mr Lyon Poh, Head of IT Assurance at KPMG in Singapore and a specialist in cloud consulting said: “By placing services onto a cloud-based platform, governments are realising that they can improve the way citizens access data and achieve bigger economies of scale. They are also able to provide a more transparent and responsive experience when interacting with key public sector departments.”

However, he added, KPMG’s interactions with public sector clients exploring cloud-based services also revealed that managing data privacy is their top priority.

“These organisations are most concerned over the privacy of data, the potential loss of critical security areas and the absence of standard security practices in cloud providers. Hence it comes as no surprise to KPMG that at the national level, ensuring data security will be critical, particularly when dealing with citizens’ personal information and sensitive government information,” he said.

Mr Poh also noted that government agencies, being privy to some of the most confidential data  available, are a frequent target of hackers.

“Government IT leaders will need to ensure that their cloud service providers can provide robust security protocols and protection before placing key services and data onto cloud-based platforms.  

“From our experience, we have seen organisations learn the hard way that extricating data upon service termination can be horrendous if a proper exit strategy was not established at the start,” said Mr Poh.

The private sector compared
Besides public sector respondents, 808 executives in the private sector across the same 10 countries were also surveyed so that a comparison between the two sectors could be established. Results reveal that the progress of government entities when it comes to cloud adoption rates significantly lags behind that of their for-profit counterparts by 9 to 13 percent.

Still, there are encouraging signs that governments are slowly catching up. Only 12 per cent of government executives had said that their agencies would devote more than 10 per cent of the overall IT expenditure to cloud in 2011. For 2012, some 28 per cent of government executives predicted that more than 10 per cent of their agencies’ IT expenditure would be allocated to cloud.

Said Mr Poh: “The Singapore Government started its cloud concept several years back, starting with a programme to provide shared computing resources to Government agencies on an ‘as-a –service’ subscription model.”

“Cloud will be an important component of Government IT infrastructure because there is growing recognition that cloud adoption will quickly become a key tool for public sector cost reduction.” Based on the results from the KPMG study, Singapore does look set to be one of the countries leading the way for public sector cloud adoption.

More than one-third, or 35 per cent, of Singapore Government respondents said that their agencies have undertaken partial implementation of cloud technologies. This is the highest percentage across the 10 countries surveyed.

In terms of full implementation of cloud technologies however, Singapore Government entities still have some way to go. It ranked sixth, with just 12 per cent of respondents indicating that their agencies have fully implemented a cloud environment.

Besides Singapore, governments in Australia, Italy, Denmark and the United States appear to have also made strong progress in implementing cloud technology with around 30 per cent of respondents in these countries indicating that they have already undertaken either a partial or full implementation of cloud.

“Governments around the world can learn valuable lessons from these front-runners, especially in the area of security and risk management,” added Mr Poh. “As cloud service providers gain valuable experience in delivering services to governments, we expect to see both confidence and adoption rates rise significantly.”