Cloud Computing can be approached purely at a technical level, using it for cheaper IT or for hosting of ad-hoc applications.

Or it can be approached at a strategic level, by CIO’s looking to drive innovation and be a leader of organizational change.

Transformational Cloud Computing is where the technology is combined with some form of business transformation program so that it can be applied this way, such as the OASIS TGF for the public sector.

Transformational Government Framework

The TGF is a practical how-to standard for the design and implementation of an effective program of technology-enabled change at national, state or local government level.

It describes a managed process of ICT-enabled change in the public sector, which puts the needs of citizens and businesses at the heart of that process and which achieves significant and transformational impacts on the efficiency and effectiveness of government.

Governments would make use of tools like the TGF through aligning them with and using them to implement and achieve the goals of top level policy programs. For example the UK’s Big Society program, which has a vision of creating ’Open Public Services‘, devolving decision-making to local levels and offering citizens involvement in ‘participatory budgeting’, transforming service delivery through moving to more effective ‘Payment by Results’ models for government services.

Commonly these initiatives focus on addressing the root performance issues of organizational siloes and how this creates disjointed citizen services, poorly planned and inefficient use of resources.

The TGF addresses these through a ‘Collaborative Stakeholder Governance Model’ to encourage and enable joined up working across private and non-profit as well as public sector organizations, and manages this collaboration through Guiding Principles, Delivery Processes, Critical Success Factors and a Benefits Realization Strategy.

As described in the Private Cloud Reference Model the interface between these business goals and Cloud technologies is the Service Delivery Layer, which is where business requirements are translated into IT requirements for delivering ITaaS – IT as a Service.

The interface point to xx is defined as the ‘Service Delivery Layer’ - This translation is achieved through a number of process best practices such as Financial Management, Service Catalogue, Demand and Capacity Management.

These are then further translated into an Operations Layer that corresponds with service management practices such as ITIL, implementing procedures such as Change Management, Incident and Problem Management, Release and Deployment Management amongst others.

Private Clouds enable greater cost transparency than can be achieved in the traditional data centre, and the reference model provides a framework to achieve more efficient operations, streamlining costs through Capacity and Availability Planning and metering of resource consumption.

Cloud Connected Government

To realize the full benefits of technology-enabled transformation, the TGF also describes a framework for using other key developments, such as integrated Cloud Identity, Crowdsourcing and Open Data among others.

For more detail on these and the TGF, and how they can be implemented on the Microsoft platform, read more in this case study of the Province of Ontario.