The Guardian roundtable in association with Fujitsu

Remote control

The £16bn annual public sector IT budget is one of the areas earmarked for cuts. Can ‘cloud computing’ overcome security and data privacy concerns to deliver savings? SJ Pritchard reports on a recent debate.

Government plans to cut 25–40% from departmental budgets – except for health, education, international development and defence – are prompting scrutiny across all areas of spending, including IT.

The plans are forcing departments to look at alternative ways of delivering services, and new technologies that can provide cost savings. One concept that is attracting interest is “cloud computing”.

In essence, by running applications on remote servers, connected over the internet (the “cloud”) – rather than on local machines – organisations can save money and also become more flexible in how they buy and run IT systems.

In response, the government is creating its own cloud computing service, the G Cloud.

In a roundtable organised by Guardian Public, and sponsored by IT services company Fujitsu, senior managers from government and the private sector asked whether cloud technology can deliver some of the efficiencies needed to cut public sector costs.

The event was conducted under the anonymity of reporting allowed under the Chatham House rule to encourage frank debate, so this report picks up themes that were discussed, without attribution.

Share this page