Government cloud (G-cloud) taking shape The neighboring governments all have got ready for G-cloud, which had prompted Vietnam to think about this as well. However, there would be a lot of things Vietnamese agencies and service providers need to do to turn this true in Vietnam. Nantawan Wongkachonkitti, Information Technology Director of the Thai E-government Department, said at FutureGov Vietnam forum held recently that the Thai government has decided to deploy cloud computing applications in a trial basis in order to cut down the expenses on technologies in building e-governmetn. On a “government cloud”, ministries and branches can interact and share the same cloud infrastructure, which allows improving the management effects. With the financial support from the government, the “government cloud” services have been operating very smoothly. One month ago, Thailand implemented one more service – ensuring information security for G-cloud. A survey in April 2012 showed that 75 percent of polled people said they were satisfied with G-Cloud. In South Korea, the cloud computing has also been used to connect provinces and cities, agencies and branches nationwide, or implement the “one stop” system. With the G-Cloud implementation, the data of government agencies would be put on cloud instead of being stored at every agency. G-Cloud now soon or late for Vietnam? Vu Duy Loi, Director of the Information Technology Center under the Party Central Committee said that it’s a bit too soon to think about cloud in Vietnam, emphasizing that at first, it is necessary to re-organize the technical infrastructure, before thinking of applying clouds. “Even central agencies have been trying to build private infrastructure, even though the common infrastructure has existed. It’s necessary to do the things to be sure that applications must be used on a common infrastructure system,” he said. Disagreeing with Loi, Phung Bao Thach, Director of the Information Technology Center under the Ministry of Science and Technology, stressed that it’s a bit late for Vietnam to approach G-Cloud at this moment. However, Thach said, as there has been no official decision by the government relating to the issue, government agencies are still lacking a legal framework to use cloud services. This explains why ministries and branches have been running their program separately. In fact, a lot of ministries and branches have pioneered in using cloud services already, namely the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment and HCM City authorities. However, according to Thach, ministries and branches have been using cloud services because they do not have other choices in their conditions. The Ministry of Science and Technology, for example, has virtualized 80 percent of its server system. However, the main reason that led to the decision was that it did not have money to invest in the infrastructure system after the Resolution No. 11 on cutting public spending. Meanwhile, the demand for information technology applications of the ministry’s units has been increasing rapidly. Analysts have said that government agencies would still be not ready for using cloud services and putting data on cloud for the fear about information security. Thach has proposed to add the task of developing G-Cloud into the government’s information technology development strategy by 2020, to which ministries and branches can refer when building up their plans. Meanwhile, cloud service providers have begun targeting government agencies and they have lobbied policy makers to consider applying cloud services in the government’s works.