Understanding Cloud Adoption Decisions in the Public Sector

Ariana Polyviou Nancy Pouloudi Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens University of Economics and Business,

Athens, Greece Athens, Greece SingularLogic S.A., Athens, Greece pouloudi@aueb.gr

apolyviou@aueb.gr Cloud computing is bringing significant changes in the way that public organizations interact with information systems. Existing research exploring cloud computing adoption in the public sector tends to privilege the technological factors. This paper contributes to the understanding of cloud computing adoption decisions in the public sector by also considering the organizational and environmental contexts of the adoption. By drawing on diffusion of innovation literature, we analyze the results of 21 interviews conducted across six European countries. The results of the study reveal that the adoption of cloud computing in the public sector is viewed with optimism and highlight that most of the factors that hinder the adoption are relevant to the environmental context. 1. Introduction Governmental bodies are in search of ways to reduce their costs and improve the quality of the services provided to citizens. In the last 15 years there has been an on-going discussion for modernizing the public sector by transforming its structures though the use of information systems. In this way, the services offered by the public sector are expected to become more efficient and effective [1]. Towards this direction, a relatively new computing paradigm, cloud computing, is deemed to be bringing radical changes in the IT service provisioning field.

In its simplest form, cloud computing comprises of a form of shared-resource and elastic computing services offered on-demand which are pooled through external data centers and are made available through the internet [2, 3]. Cloud is offered over three main different service layers, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Authors already cite cloud as the upcoming ‘fifth utility’, besides water, gas, electricity and telephone [4] whereas others argue that the use of cloud computing is transferring the world from the PC era to the utility computing era [5]. The public sector is expected to greatly benefit by the use of cloud

computing as it can experience cost reduction, minimization of IT-management overheads, increased employee collaboration, greater opportunity to innovate and other advantages [6].

Existing research that focuses on understanding the factors that affect cloud computing adoption in the public sector, pays inadequate attention to the factors that are not directly related to the technology per se, such as organizational or environmental factors [6]. However, cloud adoption is considered to have a complex and multifaceted nature. Hence factors relevant to the context in which the technology is introduced can be equally or more important than technological factors [7].

To address this gap, this paper sheds light on cloud adoption decisions in the public sector by considering the technological, organizational and environmental contexts of cloud adoption. The paper focuses on two research questions: 1) What are the factors that affect cloud computing adoption in the public sector, 2) What are the challenges arising when it comes to taking cloud adoption decisions in the public sector and how could they be tackled.

Using the lenses of the Technology-Organization-Environment framework by Tornatzky and Fleischer [8], this paper analyses the results of 21 semi-structured interviews across six European countries. Factors identified are organized in accordance to the framework in combination with input from the diffusion of innovation theory [9]. The paper contributes by expanding our understanding of cloud computing adoption in the public sector and enhancing our knowledge about the relevance of traditional IS adoption theories in respect to cloud adoption. The results presented could be useful to researchers pursuing empirical work on cloud computing and e-government fields. The paper can also provide implications for policy makers.

The rest of this paper is structured as follows; Section 2 captures the theoretical background and literature review. Section 3 describes the methodology. Section 4 presents the results arising by the study whereas Section 5 discusses the

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study’s implications. Finally, Section 6 summarizes the paper and proposes future research steps.

2. Literature Review 2.1 Theoretical Background

The diffusion of innovation theory (DOI) suggests that innovation is an idea, practice or technology that is new to an organization which is considering its adoption [9]. Diffusion of innovation occurs when the new idea is spread to organizations through certain channels over time. After becoming aware of the innovation and gaining initial knowledge about it, organizations are expected to develop an attitude towards it (favorable or unfavorable) and then to decide whether to adopt or reject it [9]. At this stage, decision makers seek for reasons justifying why the innovation should be adopted. As the decision usually involves a high level of uncertainty, decision makers look for means that could assist them in evaluating the innovation and understanding its potential consequences. In [9], five factors that influence the decision to adopt are being outlined; Relative Advantage of the new technology compared to existing ideas, Compatibility with respect to the user needs, Complexity to understand and implement, Triability of innovation prior use and Observability of the results to the adopter.

Beyond the benefits that a technological innovation can bring to the organization, several parameters relevant to the context into which the innovation is to be introduced may influence the decision to adopt. Aiming at extending DOI theory, Tornatzky and Fleischer [8] have introduced the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework by including the organizational and environmental context of the innovation’s adoption [8]. Technology refers to the technologies available to the organization and captures how selected technological factors impact the adoption process [8, 10]. Organization refers to the characteristics of the organization (e.g. processes, structure) that influence the adoption [8, 10]. Environment looks at factors related to the environment of the organization that may present opportunities or constraints for the innovation’s adoption (e.g. competitors regulations) [8, 10].The TOE framework has been successfully deployed in the past for addressing the adoption of several IS innovations (e.g. [11, 12]). 2.2 Cloud Computing Adoption & the Public Sector

There are significant efforts from an industrial perspective to support the adoption of

cloud computing in the public sector. More specifically key industrial players in the domain of IS have already focused on providing white papers and reports highlighting the potential benefits of using cloud computing for achieving more efficient public services. For example, SAP focuses on how cloud computing could assist the public sector in improving citizens lives, whereas Cisco proposes a public manager’s guide in understanding and adopting cloud services [13, 14]. Additionally, consultancies have already published reports mapping the state of cloud computing usage in the public sector [15]. Despite the efforts from the industrial side to discuss cloud computing in the public sector, the efforts of the academic community to study this domain remain limited. Such research aims to investigate the use of cloud in the public sector across the globe in an effort to enlist the relevant issues [16]. However, very few studies capturing the adoption of cloud in the public sector draw on empirically grounded data. In [6], authors identified the advantages and disadvantages of SaaS services by drawing on empirical evidence arising through a qualitative study in combination with data from reports published by the Dutch public sector. The paper raised significant insights about the benefits and obstacles of using SaaS in the public sector. But, it did not explicitly capture the organizational and environmental aspects of the adoption.

Given the limited empirically grounded research, further knowledge on cloud computing adoption could be drawn through studies that focus on cloud adoption of private organizations. For example, [17] confirms the relevance the TOE framework for addressing cloud computing adoption through the use of quantitative methodology (relative advantage, top management support and firm size evaluated as significant). Similarly, [18] also supports the relevance of TOE and DOI theories. Both studies aimed at testing a predefined list of factors through a quantitative methodology. Therefore, identifying adoption factors through the use of open-ended questions (that allow the respondents to provide spontaneous answers and elaborate on them) was outside their scope. Also, they did not address cloud adoption in the public sector.

Closer to our work, are studies from the cloud adoption literature that take into consideration all the three contexts of the innovation adoption (as suggested by TOE framework) and at the same time aim at exploring and identifying cloud adoption factors rather than testing a pre-defined set of them. For example, [10] presents an exploratory qualitative study on the factors affecting cloud computing

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adoption. Insights arising by [10] were analyzed using the lenses of TOE framework and DOI theory. For Organizational and Environmental contexts, authors deployed the definition imposed by [8]. According to [10], four technological characteristics seem to be influencing cloud adoption: relative advantage, trialability, compatibility and complexity. From an organizational viewpoint desire to improve collaboration, increased traceability and auditability as well as fitting to the organizational norms and culture of the firm were identified. At environmental level, the study revealed security and legal issues. As a result, [10] provided significant insights for understanding the cloud adoption and the issues associated to these factors in more depth. However, understanding cloud computing adoption in the public sector was outside their scope.

This paper aims at shedding light on cloud adoption decisions in the public sector by providing empirically-grounded data analyzed through the lenses of traditional IS adoption theories (TOE framework, DOI theory). To achieve this goal, we focus on exploring cloud adoption factors in the public sector as well as the challenges arising when it comes to taking cloud adoption decisions. Given the exploratory nature of our objective, we deploy a qualitative methodology for our study. Hence, the TOE framework and DOI are used as the lenses for forming our interview agendas and guiding our data analyses rather than as a pathway for deriving a pre-defined set of factors to be tested.

To this end, we consider the TOE framework following a similar approach to the one deployed by [10]. The Technology context of the TOE framework is outlined by the five aspects defined by Rogers [9]; Relative Advantage, Compatibility, Complexity, Triability and Observability. The Organizational context is considered in terms of the characteristics of the organization (e.g. processes, structure) influencing the adoption of cloud in the public sector and by Environmental context we seek for external factors that may present opportunities or constraints for cloud computing adoption in the public institution.

3. Methodology

The research presented in this paper is exploratory, aiming at mapping the views on adopting cloud services in the public sector in selected European countries. To this end, semi-structured interviews with 21 participants were conducted. Interviewees from EU-counties that differed on levels of cloud maturity, percentages of e-Public services usage (i.e. percentage of citizens using the internet to interact with the public sector)

and socio-economic conditions were selected. The views of representatives from public administrations (municipalities, educational bodies, governmental and regional agencies such as police departments, ministries etc) were included. Insights from interviewees by IT vendors offering cloud solutions to the public sector were also included so as to provide a more integrated set of perspectives. Further details on the types of participants are listed in Table 1. For confidentiality reasons, the identity details of the respondents were removed and a unique ID to distinguish the quotes of each participant was included.

Aiming at selecting the most appropriate respondents, the partners of a research project served as channels for identifying participants from their country. The criteria for selecting participants were to a) have good level of knowledge and experience on the targeted subject b) to be aware of the adoption of cloud services in the public sector through their current role c) to be willing to contribute and be open to provide sincere responses to the interviewing process. Participants were divided into three types of interviewees based on the nature of their organization and their role in it (i.e. ICT Manager, Policy Maker, Vendor). ICT managers were usually the CIOs of public administrations which have already migrated or were considering to migrating to the cloud. Policy Makers were usually individuals from public administrations that are active in policy making on IT matters at national or regional level. Vendors were cloud service providers offering such services to the public sector. Key questions to be addressed aimed at identifying cloud adoption factors and understanding the cloud adoption decision making process. For each group of interviewees the questions were slightly adjusted to fit the targeted participant group and in this way, three similar interview agendas were developed. Based on the type of interviewee targeted, one of the agendas was selected as a guide for the interview offering flexibility for further points to be raised by the respondents.

Part A of each of the three agendas captured demographic information of the interviewee and required the participant to rate his/her understanding of cloud computing. Then for the group of ICT Managers, Part B of the agenda captured questions about the current status of adoption in their organization, the systems currently used etc. Part C deployed open-ended questions on the factors influencing the organization to migrate to the cloud, the decision making process, the problems experienced and how the barriers could be resolved. Similarly for Policy Makers, Part B questioned the

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Sector Country InterviewAgenda ID

Public Education Greece ICT Manager i8_CIO

Public Education Poland ICT Manager i17_CIO

Public Education Poland ICT Manager i5_CIO

Government Agency Greece Policy Maker i4_PM

Government Agency Greece Policy Maker i6_PM

Government Agency Italy Policy Maker i13_PM

Regional Agency U.K. Policy Maker i18_PM

IT service provider Greece Vendor i3_VR

IT service provider Greece Vendor i9_VR

IT service provider Greece Vendor i10_VR

IT service provider Italy Vendor i11_VR

IT service provider Italy ICT Manager i12_CIO

IT service provider Germany Vendor i14_VR

IT service provider Germany Vendor i21_VR

Municipality Greece ICT Manager i2_CIO

Municipality Poland ICT Manager i15_CIO

Municipality Germany ICT Manager i20_CIO

Regional Admin. Greece Policy Maker i7_PM

Regional Admin. Greece Policy Maker i19_PM

Regional Admin. Italy ICT Manager i22_CIO

Regional Admin. Poland ICT Manager i16_CIO Table 1 – Description of interviewees

status of cloud computing adoption in the targeted department/region in which the policy maker contributes and Part C included open-ended questions on the factors impacting the adoption, the structure of the decision making process etc. Finally, Part B of the vendors’ agenda questioned the vendors on the products they offer to the public sector, their experience with public sector authorities when it comes to cloud adoption and Part C deployed open-ended questions on the factors influencing cloud computing adoption that they believed public administrations are experiencing (based on their experience with the public sector), the decision making process that occurs when public administrations are considering the use of cloud services as well as the barriers that arise when it comes to cloud computing adoption and how they could be resolved. In all the three types of interview agendas, the use of open-ended questions aimed at capturing the most important factors and procedures of the decision making process as spontaneously denoted by the responders without providing them with any indications about what the possible answers could be.

The interviews lasted approximately one hour. Only participants denoting at least 6/10 understanding of cloud computing were included in the study results (i.e. those included in Table 1). The interview discussions were transcribed and the key findings were summarized and analyzed by the interviewer. The interview transcripts were then reviewed by the authors of the paper. The findings of this research are presented in the following section. 4. Results

Sub-section 4.1 presents the technological factors identified whereas sub-sections 4.2 and 4.3 present the organizational and environmental factors respectively. Table 2 summarizes the factors identified and briefly captures relevant quotes of the interviewees. Sub-section 4.4 compares the findings on a per country basis. 4.1 Technological factors

For the Technology context, relative advantage, compatibility and complexity were identified as relevant for the adoption of cloud in the public sector. Observability and triability seem not to be relevant on the basis of the dataset presented in this paper.

Concerning relative advantage, most of the interviewees identified cost savings as one of the major benefits that cloud computing can offer to the public sector compared to cloud’s predecessors. More specifically, interviewees view reduction of costs in terms of reducing the cost for buying and maintaining hardware equipment “if we have to install and maintain 10 datacenters instead of 100, there is an obvious economic and organizational benefit” [i13_PM]. Others, refer to the reduction of costs associated to the pay-as-you-go benefit that cloud offers “The most important thing for public authorities is cost reduction. You can serve these services much, much cheaper than on premise classical service” [i21_VR], “we pay exactly when use the product and depending on how much they use it” [i11_VR]. Other interviewees refer to specific services that may have a massive economic benefit if cloud computing is used “In fact using a unique software could be very cost effective for the Italian citizens and also bring huge benefits in terms of costs and time savings, as ID cards are issued in the same way all over the country” [i13_PM], “costs savings that are also related to energy and time consumption” [i12_CIO]. Others view also indirect cost reduction as “reduction of IT management and maintenance” [i17_CIO].

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In addition, through the study scalability was identified to be contributing to cloud’s relative advantage compared to other traditional computing paradigms. As interviewees noted, public administrations often face the “issue that they are providing a new service which wasn’t previously there and they have tough time judging how many people will pick it up and in which intensity” [i21_VR]. Moreover, scalability can also improve the quality of service at peak times e.g. “make better use of the available resources as there is a need to support large numbers of users at peak time” [i6_PM], “especially for systems which receive peak times only few times per year (e.g. tax payment)” [i3_VR].

In addition, compatibility associated to meeting the needs of the potential adopters was identified as relevant in terms of meeting the needs for file management and backup. As noted, “Cloud services consist a major backup tool as the files [are] safe and protected from damages stored on a safe place” [i2_CIO]. Cloud also allows small public administrations (e.g. municipalities) to acquire backup capabilities without any additional effort “for example not all small Municipalities do backup maintenance; with cloud solutions this backup would not be necessary as data are all stored in the cloud” [i12_CIO].

Another group of factors that seem to impact cloud computing adoption in the public sector is relevant to the perceived difficulty of understanding and using the innovation, that is, related to the complexity of adopting cloud services in the public sector. According to the interview insights, this seems to be relevant to the lack of knowledge by public sector staff members. For example, as one of the interviewees noted, “lack of know-how and ignorance of benefits” [i8_CIO] are some of the reasons that make public sector staff members to resist to cloud computing adoption.

4.2. Organizational factors

From an organizational perspective, interoperability and focus on key business processes as well as the desire to meet security, environmental and transparency of processes standards, seem to be the factors influencing cloud adoption in the public sector.

First, public administrations often face the problem of not being able to interoperate with one another. This is relevant to one of the factors that facilitate cloud computing adoption; the desire to improve the interoperability between public administrations. This seems to be one of the key factors identified by a large number of participants that is expected to directly improve the services

offered to citizens. As one of the interviewees elaborated, “cloud computing forces in a way all departments to converge in standard ways of doing their work” [i18_PM]. The use of cloud computing could also contribute to ensuring the fulfillment of certain quality levels by public administrations as it “would facilitate the enforcement of centralized policies (e.g. backups, security, etc.) at the desktop level by all public services” [i7_PM]. Cloud can also promote interoperability by enhancing collaboration between public sector official. Cloud offers a “common working environment for users” [i16_CIO] regardless of their physical location and hence it can contribute to “increased capacity of file sharing […] between the various collaborators” [i2_CIO].

In addition, through the use of cloud computing, public administrations can focus on their key business processes by reducing their IT management overhead. The adoption of cloud can contribute to a “centralized and more efficient management” [i9_VR] and hence “system maintenance tasks might be greatly relieved due to concentration of hardware infrastructure to a few data centers” [i4_PM]. Also, the use of cloud computing by public administrations can lead to a “better ‘organized’ infrastructure (more efficient infrastructure management policy)” [i17_CIO]. As another interviewee elaborated further, “it is easier for us [the IT department] to handle with 4 people when the service is in the cloud […] service model we want is that [for which we will] worry only for how the end user will have access to the service. The service provider worries about databases, disk space, memory, and so on. We hire the application as service. Our benefit is to have less staff than comparable municipalities and to concentrate on basic IT management and not to technical things like IT backend. We concentrate ourselves to the client. It allows us to focus on our main purpose” [i20_CIO].

Furthermore, cloud can contribute to meeting certain policies and procedures often imposed to public administrations such as meeting certain environmental or security standards or ensuring transparency of processes. Concerning the need for meeting certain green targets, cloud allows the more efficient and centralized use of IT resources based on their demand at each time and as a result it leads to the use of a more “environmental-friendly computing” [i18_PM]. Hence public administrations can benefit by “exploiting economies of scale that are brought about by cloud across the government and move on to a greener computing paradigm” [i18_PM]. Moreover, public organizations are obliged to assure certain security levels for their IT services. A large number of interviewees noted that

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Technology Relative advantage

Reduction of costs “[…] install and maintain 10 datacenters instead of 100[…]” [i13_PM], “[…] can serve these services much, much cheaper than on premise classical service[…]” [i21_VR] , “pay exactly when use the product[…]” [i11_VR] “[…] using a unique software could be very cost effective[…]” [i13_PM], “costs savings that are also related to energy and time consumption” [i12_CIO] , “Lower electric energy consumption[…]” [i15_CIO], “reduction of IT management and maintenance” [i17_CIO] Scalability “have tough time judging how many people will pick it up and in which intensity.” [i21_VR], “use available resources as there is a need to support large numbers of users at peak time” [i6_PM], “especially for systems which receive peak times only few times per year (e.g. tax payment)” [i3_VR]

Compatibility

“Cloud services consist a major backup tool […]” [i2_CIO], “[…]this backup would not be necessary as data are all stored in the cloud[…]” [i12_CIO]

Complexity “lack of know-how and ignorance of benefits” [i8_CIO] Organization

Interoperability

“[…] converge in standard ways of doing their work” [i18_PM], “would facilitate the enforcement of centralized policies […] all public services” [i7_PM], “[…] easier to enforce common standards and business processes” [i10_VR]

Focus on key business processes

“centralized and more efficient management” [i9_VR], “system maintenance tasks might be greatly relieved […]” [i4_PM], “easier for us [the IT department] to handle with 4 people[...]” [i20_CIO]

More organization “better ‘organized’ infrastructure (more efficient infrastructure management policy)” [i17_CIO] Meet security standards

“not to mention the security for data” [i13_PM], “security improvement – ability for systems multilevel isolation” [i3_VR], “the greatest benefit is the security […]”[i2_CIO],“[…] improvement of security” [i17_CIO], “[...] reduce risks” [i13_PM]

Meet environmental standards

“environmental-friendly computing” [i18_PM], “[…] move on to a greener computing paradigm” [i18_PM]

Transparency of processes standards

“transparency of workflows” [i9_VR], “the region intends to focus on three areas considered to be of strategic importance […] making it more transparent” [i12_CIO]

Environment Bureaucracy “very slow bureaucratic process that could last 3 years” [i16_CIO], “decision was not taken till the time key systems

breakdown [occurred]” [i15_CIO] Political matters “persuading the government[…]” [i5_CIO], “[…] had to explain the benefits of Cloud Computing to the Parliamentary

Management and convincing them of the importance of the migration process” [i7_PM] “procrastination of taking the decision by managers[…]” [i16_CIO]

Legal issues “legislation obstacles prevent […] from migrating to the Cloud” [i9_VR], “[…] Mainly legal problems. This is mainly one of the biggest […][i21_VR], “European policy for not moving citizens personal data outside EU” [i2_CIO], “we have very strict legal restrictions […]” [i21_VR], “Insufficient laws and regulations” [i15_CIO] “all these compliances, legal issues, very big point in the public area[…]” [i21_VR]

Table 2 – Factors influencing cloud adoption in the public sector

cloud contributes to meeting this requirement better. When referring to security, some participants refer to “the security for data” [i13_PM]. Some, also view cloud as a pathway for controlling the information systems more efficiently and therefore reaching better privacy security levels “security improvement – ability for systems multilevel isolation”[i3_VR], “the greatest benefit is the security, privacy and control”[i2_CIO]. Similarly, others view the improvement in security to be facilitated by the centralization of IT that the use of cloud can offer: “one of the benefits of centralization from an organizational aspect is improvement of security” [i17_CIO], “easier creation of integrated ecosystem software and reduce risks” [i13_PM]. Finally, the use of cloud computing can foster the traceability of IT usage and data storage such that it can make the “transparency of workflows” [i9_VR] possible. Administrations seem to view transparency as a priority: “the region intends to focus on three areas considered to be of strategic importance […] making it more transparent” [i12_CIO].

4.3 Environmental factors From an environmental perspective, the

overall external environment of individual public administrations seems to be preventing rather than fostering cloud computing adoption.

Despite the fact that the adoption of cloud services minimizes costs of initial investment and risks associated to it, the cloud adoption decision making process for public administrations is long and bureaucratic. As underlined by interviewees, cloud adoption decision for some public administrations is a “very slow bureaucratic process that could last 3 years” [i16_CIO]. Others even noted that the decision to use cloud computing “was not taken till the time key systems breakdown [occurred]” [i15_CIO].

The bureaucratic issues arising can be directly related to the lack of knowledge and political will. According to our interviewees, migration barriers are associated to “persuading the government, because of the fact that the migration process required national funds” [i5_CIO]. This could be also related to the insufficient technology

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awareness of the decision makers as identified in the Technological context. According to one of our interviewees “problems [arising] were of political nature. We had to explain the benefits of Cloud Computing to the Parliamentary Management and convince them of the importance of the migration process.” [i7_PM]. Other interviewees also underlined internal politics within the organization that influence the decision “procrastination of taking the decision by managers, decision makers claimed cloud technologies as not trustworthy” [i16_CIO].

Furthermore, legal issues seem also to be delaying cloud computing adoption in the public sector. Interviewees denoted that “legislation obstacles prevent services of the public sector from migrating to the Cloud” [i9_VR]. As indicated, legal problems are outweighing any technical barriers when it comes to the adoption of cloud services in the public sector and therefore it might be one of its biggest barriers “at the moment there are no problems if you mean from the technical view. From another other view, there are many problems coming. Mainly legal problems. This is mainly one of the biggest reasons local authorities not using cloud” [i21_VR]. Such could be for example national or regional regulations for data handling, especially for certain types of public institutions that are enforced to exclude the use of providers with datacenters outside a predefined territory, e.g. “European policy for not moving citizens personal data outside EU” [i2_CIO]. As one of the interviewees elaborated “we have very strict legal restrictions on how to use the IT […], because the data is leaving the EU and is stored somewhere in America and so there are very high legal restrictions and especially public authorities cannot go around these legal restrictions” [i21_VR]. Finally, inconsistency or inexistence of the appropriate regulation also prevents public administrations from migrating “Insufficient laws and regulations, need to ensure conformance with ISO 27001, unlawfulness (inconsistency with Polish law)” [i15_CIO] “All these compliances, legal issues [are a] very big point in the public area. You must solve all the problems concerning the governmental legal parts or public sector will not use cloud” [i21_VR].

Sub-sections 4.1 to 4.3 presented the empirical insights arising by the study. Sub-section 4.4 compares the results among different countries.

4.4 Cross-country comparison

Although we acknowledge the small number of representatives in some of the countries (e.g. the U.K.), it is worth comparing the results of the study across the different countries included. We use the differences between the countries selected i.e., socio-

economic conditions, level of e-Public services usage (according to Eurostat1) and level of cloud maturity (how extensive cloud adoption is in the respective country) as drivers for our comparison.

From a technological perspective, participants from all countries, regardless of the country’s socio-economic conditions, seem to acknowledge the relative advantage (especially cost reduction) offered by the cloud technology compared to their existing systems. Moreover, participants from countries with lower level of e-Public services usage (e.g. Greece) indicated complexity (i.e. difficulty in understanding or using cloud) as one of the barriers. From an organisational perspective, participants by nearly all countries (Greece, Poland, U.K.) identified interoperability as one of the factors that foster cloud computing adoption regardless the socio-economic conditions or cloud maturity levels of the country. Similarly, interviewees from Germany, Greece and Poland identified the need in the public sector to reduce its IT management overhead as a reason for cloud computing adoption. Concerning the need of meeting certain environmental standards, the U.K. was the only country that seems to consider this as a benefit. This could be justified if we consider the maturity of cloud provision in this country which denotes deeper understanding of the technology’s full potential. In addition, security factors were identified by participants of all countries as a benefit arising by the use of cloud. Participants from Greece indicated the desire to improve transparency of processes as one of the factors that lead to cloud adoption in the public sector. We consider this to be directly related to the country’s socio-economic conditions and the lack of trust to public authorities.

From an environmental perspective, participants from countries with more difficult socio-economic conditions (Greece, Poland) denoted bureaucracy as one of the major barriers for cloud computing adoption. Similarly, participants from Greece and Poland indicated political matters as barriers for cloud computing adoption. This could be justified if we consider that Greece and Poland have relatively low levels of e-Public services usage and cloud maturity and hence the insufficient awareness by the decision makers which can prolong the decision making process. Finally, legal issues were identified as a barrier to cloud computing adoption by

1 http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=isoc_bde15ei&lang=e

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participants from Greece, Germany and Poland. Surprisingly, although Germany holds a more mature cloud computing profile and higher levels of e-Public services usage, legal issues seem to hinder in some cases cloud services adoption. This could be related to the culture of the country when it comes to storing and processing personal data. For example, the U.K., which also holds a more mature cloud computing profile and high levels of e-Public services usage seems to have a more flexible legal context that facilitates cloud adoption in the public sector.

5. Discussion

In Section 4 we have provided empirical insights related to cloud computing adoption in the public sector by taking into consideration the adoption’s Technological, Organizational and Environmental contexts. This section discusses our findings in respect to existing literature and to the cloud adoption decision making process.

From a technological viewpoint, relative advantage and compatibility seem to be facilitating the adoption of cloud services in the public sector. These factors seem to be applicable to both public and private sector as they are aligned with the findings of [10, 17, 18]. In line with existing literature that address cloud adoption in private organizations, complexity was identified as an obstacle for cloud adoption in public sector [18]. Triability and observability were not noted by the participants, although cloud providers seem to be providing trial periods for their potential customers. This could be associated to the fact that in the public sector, a long bureaucratic procedure is required before being able to transfer data to any candidate provider and hence trial periods do not seem to be applicable. Finally, observability was not identified as relevant as also identified by [10].

Concerning the Organizational context, desire for interoperability, reduction of IT management overheads (i.e. desire to focus on key business processes), need for meeting security and environmental policies, and transparency of processes desire were identified as to be positively influencing the adoption. According to existing literature, lack of interoperability is one of the main causes for the limited deployment of many e-government attempts [19]. According to our interviewees, the adoption of cloud by public organizations is expected to enforce the deployment of common standards and business processes and hence improve the interoperability in the public sector. In addition, security, control, data handing and privacy have been in the past identified as barriers for cloud computing adoption [10]. However,

all of the interviewees in the study who identified security seem to be viewing cloud computing adoption as a way to better facilitate security rather than the opposite. This may be justified by the fact that all interviewees considered for this study claimed of having a relatively good level of knowledge of cloud computing which allows them to focus on the positive security aspects of cloud usage, i.e., centralized security management and compliance. Another interpretation could that interviewees consider the technology to be contributing to enhanced security as long as it is in accordance with the appropriate regulation at national or EU level. In addition, the desire to meet green policies is another factor positively influencing cloud adoption in the public sector that was not empirically identified by previous scholars. In our study, this insight was noted only by the respondent group of policy makers, which is an indication that meeting green standards in the usage of technology is an important aim from a political viewpoint. Investigating the perceptions towards cloud security and how they are formulated in the public and the private sectors as well as investigating the impact of the desire to meet green standards are topics that warrant further research.

With regards to Environmental context, bureaucracy, political matters and legal issues seem to be influencing cloud adoption in the public sector. All the three factors seem to be considered as barriers for cloud adoption and some of them (e.g. legal issues) were denoted as one of the major reasons preventing the public sector from adopting cloud services. Legal matters have been identified by related literature [6, 10]. Bureaucratic and political matters were not clearly identified by the literature although few aspects identified by [6] (e.g. “Strategic alignment”) could be considered to be indirectly relevant to bureaucracy. Interestingly bureaucratic and legal matters were not identified by any of the policy making respondents. These findings illustrate the need for enhancing existing policies when it comes to cloud adoption in the public sector. It suggests a difference in perception among respondents which could be due to lack of awareness in public agencies or conversely denotes their reluctance to take up responsibility for the legal context.

5.1 The decision making process

Cloud adoption decision making seems to be initiated either through a top-down initiative (from political level to small administrations e.g. “Migration is dictated top-down, from the Cabinet office to all involved departments. Cabinet office, prime minister, and ministers of all involved

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departments” [i19_PM]) or through a bottom-up initiative (from IT people of small administrations to top level management e.g. “Bottom-up procedure. The technical department identifies which services should or could be migrated to the Cloud. Then, depending on the nature of services, the directors of the involved offices/departments are asked for permission. In turn, these people may ask their supervisors for permission, and so on.” [i7_PM]). Regardless of whether it is a top-down or a bottom-up initiative there seem to be a large number of stakeholders from top positions involved in the decision making process (e.g. “Head of Communication and Information Technology Department, Head of Regional Headquarter, Head of National Headquarter” [i16_CIO]). According to the results of [17, 18], top management support was identified to be impacting adoption. Our findings contribute to this matter by clarifying that top management support is very relevant for cloud adoption decisions in the public sector as multiple non-technical stakeholders are involved in the cloud decision making process. Our results show that one of the major factors that could be influencing top management support is the complexity barrier (cf. Section 4). According to our insights, lack of understanding of the technology by the top-management decision makers is delaying or blocking the adoption. As a result, this could be contributing to making the decision making process bureaucratic and slow (e.g. “Very slow bureaucratic process that could last 3 years since decision is taken” [i16_CIO]) if compared to cases in which fewer people from top level management are involved (e.g. “The process for each service takes round about 6 months to a year” “We propose the problem and the solution but the mayor usually takes the final decision” [i20_CIO]).

As discussed earlier, barriers to cloud adoption in the public sector are complexity, bureaucracy, political and legal issues. As these factors seem to hinder the cloud decision making process, it is worth proposing avenues through which they could be addressed. For example, complexity could be addressed by offering additional education to non-technical decision makers concerning cloud computing and its benefits (“proper education and change of mind set […] are needed” [i9_VR]).

Beyond improving the awareness of cloud’s benefits, bureaucratic and political matters could be addressed by the formulation of a common strategy for cloud computing adoption in the public sector either at a regional or a national level. As one of the interviewees clarified, “there is also a lack of an overall strategy of what to migrate and what not to migrate. A central administration needs to be

established in order to establish, implement an overall strategy towards migration to the Cloud. Proper coordination and common policies are needed and should be globally enforced to all departments of the Public Sector.” [i7_PM]. The “Promotion of Cloud solutions to the decision makers so that Cloud computing becomes part of their body’s overall strategy” [i8_CIO] and addressing cloud migration “in a horizontal manner as it concerns the public sector in total, instead of just a part of it” [i9_VR] could also contribute towards speeding up and easing the decision making process. As another interviewee noted, forming regulation that will push public administrations could contribute to making the process faster: “The Italian Government should encourage the migration to cloud. Each single Region could promote with Regional laws […]” [i13_PM].

Moreover, legal issues could also be addressed by contributing to the “need for SLAs” [i10_VR]. In addition, the creation of certification bodies aiming at rating cloud services and clarifying what is acceptable to be adopted by the public authorities across Europe could also contribute to a large extend. As suggested by the participants “What would be good is a kind of certification. This data center is certified by European Union” […] you can choose also outside of your own country a service that is certified by the EU that would support the use and acceptance of cloud computing in public authorities […] If I look for a cloud provider from e.g. Italy or France, cannot trust the other local institutions because there are other legal issues and therefore it would be an European issue to certify or make a kind of certificate for cloud” [i20_CIO]. Finally, the legal barriers could be resolved through the creation of a global platform offering cloud services that represent “a repository of available Cloud-based applications that meet specific standards and requirements” [i10_VR]. These suggestions can be useful to policy makers, although they merit further research.

6. Conclusion

In the previous sections we have presented the results of a qualitative study on cloud computing adoption in the public sector by considering not only the technological context of the adoption, but also by taking into account its Organizational and Environmental context. According to the study’s insights, factors of technological (except complexity) and organizational nature seem to be positively influencing the adoption of cloud in the public sector whereas environmental factors seem to be making the adoption decision difficult and lengthy. Despite the identified barriers, the study revealed a positive

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attitude towards adopting cloud services in the public sector especially if we consider that most of the barriers are of environmental nature (i.e. beyond the control of the responding organization). Furthermore, respondents seem to view cloud computing as a means to improve their security levels (given that an appropriate regulatory framework exists) and reach their environmental standards.

The study contributed to our knowledge about cloud adoption and highlighted the necessity of considering the Technological, Organizational and Environmental context when addressing cloud adoption in the public sector. Through this, it has also demonstrated the relevance of traditional IS adoption theories (i.e TOE, DOI) when it comes to examining cloud adoption. In addition, the study contributed by revealing that the public sector seems to view cloud computing adoption with optimism. Furthermore, some additional factors relevant to the public sector were identified (desire to improve interoperability, need for meeting certain environmental standards, bureaucracy, political matters, complexity in terms of understanding the technology). Finally, the paper has shed light on how the cloud adoption decision making process is initiated and how its structure is related to the barriers of cloud computing adoption as well as suggested pathways for overcoming them.

Future studies, could invite participants from a broader geographical spread so as achieve a more detailed cross-country comparison analysis. A second research could be to focus on juxtaposing factors identified (and especially those that seem to interpolate) by taking into account the stage/status of the cloud decision making process. Finally, factors identified as barriers (mainly environmental factors) need to be investigated in more depth.

Acknowledgments The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme(FP7-PEOPLE-2010-ITN) under the RELATE Marie Curie ITN project (grant agreement 264840). The data collection process of this paper has been supported by the FP7-ICT-2011-8, SUCRE Project (Prj No. 318204).

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