Shareef Shareef
there is no IT infrastructure in the department to accomplish and provide e‐services to its citizens. There is now an emerging consensus that cloud will play a significant role in IT operations. This will substantially facilitate the provision of computing e‐services and change the delivery model for services. A recent study carried out by international research firm Vanson Boume of IT and business decision makers revealed that 70 % of participants think cloud computing will assist their business.
According to the interview carried out with the advisor at the IT department at the council of ministries most of the ministries in the region are connected together via fiber optic cables, and also there is a consideration of connecting to the FLAG network. However, he mentioned that until now the system is not available for government institutions. In addition, he stated that the current government system is facing several challenges that should be solved to prepare for e‐Government initiative( Shareef et al., 2010). He specifically focused on the lack of interoperability and lack of inter‐institutions coordination between ministries and government institutions. This might make an e‐Government initiative difficult to implement, because every ministry is carrying out projects independently without referring to other agencies, or sharing the information with the other related ministries to uptake the project successfully. As a consequence, this will lead to assorted efforts from various government entities and thus will create a lack of interoperable systems.
The prospect of bringing cloud computing and e‐Government together is challenging. It is vital to understand the different elements that are important to construct and maintain a cloud that achieves each government’ s objective. Governments in the Asia Pacific region assigned huge priority to server virtualization and network security( Chandrasekaran & Kapoor 2011). Server Virtualization will assist governments meet its merging objectives. In addition, security is a substantial facet to government adoption. The government adopts cloud computing merely if they are convinced that its data will remain secure and available. Therefore, the adoption of cloud computing in developing countries in general and in KRI in particular is vital to address the lack of IT infrastructure‐ server virtualization and security. Even in 2007 the KRI has managed to establish an access network; which is a network that connect most of the government departments together. However, according to the manager of the IT in the ministry of transportation and communication, since 2007 this project has not been used by government.
Most of the recent research is concentrated on cloud computing in the context of the internet and how it changes the computing solutions in developed countries( Fiji, 2011). Cloud computing will provide more significant opportunities for developing countries. Recent research highlights the use of mobile applications which enabled via cloud computing. In many developing countries, phones and internet connections have reached its citizen via wired infrastructure. Those countries such as KRI that are mountainous where many isolated villages are located, are virtually impossible to connect to the internet. Mobile technology infrastructure has become a viable savior for these physically and technologically isolated people. In this regard, according to the interview carried out with director of general of the ministry of transportation and communication mentioned to some of the main mobile companies in the region such as Asia cell, Korek Telecom, Sana Tel and Mobi Tel, etc. Which they are substantially contributing and hence facilitating the adoption of e‐Government system.
However, the well‐being level of mobile usage in the region combined with the lack of power and internet infrastructure, provides an exclusive opportunity that cloud computing can fill. The SaaS provides a free or low cost alternative to conventional desktop based productivity applications. They do not need to buy expensive offices with huge number of skilled staff or accounting software. These businesses have alternatives to employ customer relationship management( CRM) applications, which were very expensive in the conventional software world. By hosting their data on the clouds, these businesses are not held hostage to frequent power failures and broadband disruption. Their data will be available and accessible on their mobile. With the arrival of reasonably priced smart phones and mini laptops, with mobile data capabilities, they can have IT infrastructure which can parallel even those of developed countries( Harris & Nunn, 2012; Greengard, 2010).
It is obvious that most of the government departments have similar data processing needs, thus elements of the same type need similar software functionality to manage their operations. Hence, cloud computing can be measured as one of the key solution for such case via its ability to offer SaaS to serve the entire government departments employing similar application with little modification to meet each department needs. The modification in the cloud computing will affect the metadata only and not the application source code( Cellary & Strykowski, 2009).
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