IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2013 - 71

government services. The idea is
to establish standards for security and applications in order to
make it easy for the U.S. government to use cloud services. Apps
for Government received FISMA
certification in July 2010. There
is a list of U.S. Federal government-approved software at www.
apps.gov. A similar model could
be implemented by or for public
organizations in Europe.

Table III
Seven Principles of the Safe Harbor
Principle

Description

Notice

Inform affected individuals that data are being
collected and how they are to be used.
Permit individuals to opt-out from having data about
them being collected and transferred.
Individuals must be able to access the information
about them and be able to correct or delete it if the
information is inaccurate.
Take care of the data transfer to other organizations.
There must be effective means of enforcing these
rules.
Have security measures to prevent loss and ensure
data integrity.
Data transfer can be done only to other organizations
that follow adequate data protection principles.

Choice
Access

Security
Enforcement

App Stores and GovCloud

Data Integrity

App Stores and
Services Catalogues
The use of application stores and
service catalogues is something
that is not directly associated with
cloud computing models, but will
soon be used in these models as a
simple way of offering services.
In this way customers can
choose services and re-use them
quickly when needed. The aim is
to re-use as much as possible, having a set of services and applications that are generic enough to
be used by different organizations
and that have been successfully
implemented and used by other
organizations.
In spite of the many resources
and technologies available to
public organizations, many challenges have been encountered
in developing and implementing
e-government systems. According to pockharel and park, cloud
computing and related technologies can address some of the traditional challenges [10]. A good
example is the UK G-Cloud initiative, where an app store will be
created with a service catalogue
of standard services that could
be used by different government
organizations. [11]
Applications and services can
be provided by governmental organizations, by different vendors,
or even by the public and can be
added to the existing ones, bringing
new functionality or extra services.
The applications and services

Onward
Transfer

should be controlled by a specific
body (normally part of the government that will use them) that will
review them to ensure they meet
the required standards.

Data Initiative (OGDI) that uses
the Windows Azure platform to
make it easier to publish and use
a wide variety of public data from
U.S. government agencies [3].

Legal requirements, especially
those relating to data protection,
are probably the most important
consideration when public
organizations plan to use
cloud services.
GovCloud
Implementation Examples
A good example of how providers are starting to create services
specifically for government use is
Amazon GovCloud for the U.S.
The implementation is such that
the infrastructure is not shared
with other non-government customers; providing machine, network and data isolation. It is also
assigned to Amazon's U.S. region,
ensuring data do not leave the U.S.
and that the service complies with
FISMA moderated controls. A
similar example is the Microsoft
standards-based open data initiative called the Open Government

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

|

SprING 2013

Possible Benefits
Even if public organizations face
similar challenges to private ones,
the different types of services provided by public organizations (open
data, social interaction,) makes cloud
services more attractive to them. Utilization of cloud services by public
organizations is lower than by private
ones; especially in Europe, mainly
because of the challenges explained
in this article, including lack of
established standards and there are
few cloud services that meet all the
requirements of European governmental organizations. There are
many different public organizations
with different legal requirements and
|

71
http://www.apps.gov
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2013
