Councils ignore UK government’s ‘Cloud First’ policy

Despite the UK government publishing its Cloud First policy and calling for the public sector to consider cloud services, the majority of UK councils are yet to adopt the cloud.

Many local UK authorities are not yet using cloud services for handling citizen data, raising concerns over funding for infrastructure and data fragmentation.

Freedom of Information

According to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request, 80% of councils are still using on-premise infrastructure to manage and access citizen data.

Citrix’s FoI data found that the private cloud is the most popular model, used by 30% of councils surveyed, followed by a hybrid mode used by a quarter of respondents, with only 7.5% using the public cloud.

‘Political pressure’

Furthermore, data fragmentation is still a major concern, with 70% of IT teams saying they’re unsure if their authorities have a “single view” of citizen data.

Nearly 80% of UK councils have revealed that they are considering investing in cloud infrastructure in the next year, while 7.5% are planning on downsizing their physical IT infrastructure by deleting on-premise servers or physical hardware.

In conclusion, the report found that despite the political pressure on local councils to move to the cloud, there were few examples of best practice.

Written by Leah Alger

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