Public Cloud for Public Services

 

Solutions for common concerns – not only for public authorities.

The use of public cloud services is meanwhile widespread. As the number of easily accessible offerings grows, cloud services are also increasingly finding their way into highly regulated sectors, such as the public sector (public authorities) or the financial industry.

The advantages are numerous (e.g. security, innovativeness, agility, responsiveness, and possibly also costs). Those advantages contrast with new or different challenges, which have to be duly taken into account: the data is located with the cloud provider – possibly abroad. One speaks of the data processing being «outsourced» to the cloud provider.

The data processing has to remain under the control of the cloud customer. In order to ensure such control the cloud customer needs to thoroughly understand the cloud service and the cloud provider, especially with regard to information security. With the increasing spread of cloud services from the large international cloud providers (so-called «hyperscalers»), general awareness and understanding of how they handle the data entrusted to them increases. Knowledge and experience of how to maintain control “in the cloud” are spreading rapidly.

However, certain concerns in the public debate may inhibit the use of cloud services. The concerns can be summarised as follows: The cloud (meaning cloud services) is considered problematic in terms of data protection law and cross-border issues would stand in the way of its use. Some say the concerns would be even more important if the cloud customer was subject to legal secrecy obligations

In our White Paper “Public “Public Cloud for Public Services”, we show that such concerns do not stand up to legal scrutiny if cloud services are chosen that meet certain minimum standards.

(On the initiative and with kind support of AWS)

10 September 2021