NB: Digital by Default, in partnership with Agilisys, conducted a survey on cloud adoption in the public sector. The findings of this survey have been pulled together in a report.
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A new study into the take-up of cloud services by local authorities has revealed that half of councils still lack a valid cloud strategy.
The survey of 100 of the UK’s councils by public sector-focused non-for-profit IT provider Eduserv, discovered that 44% lacked a cloud strategy while only 15% were considering implementing one.
The research also found that on-premise data centres are still heavily used; 63 of the respondents said they had two or more while 34 were using no external data centres.
Other key findings from the research include:
- Only 10 of the councils that responded have moved to a pure cloud IT model
- 66% of councils use third-party datacentres to host their IT workloads
- 90% favour the use of on-premise data stores.
- However, 73% of councils use cloud-based storage in some form or other
- 27% of councils approached could not provide a breakdown of where their data was currently held
The company obtained its information via a Freedom of Information request to all 430 local authorities across the UK. The results have been broken down into a series of reports written by Eduserv principal analyst Jos Creese.
Commenting on the findings, Creese said: “As cloud use becomes more ubiquitous, local authorities cannot afford not to have plans to ensure that it is used safely and with controls in place to ensure data is managed in a way which reduces risk.
“From a strategic perspective, the prevalence of on premise IT shows that the majority of councils are still poorly positioned to exploit digital change in a way which generates both service and financial benefit.”
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