The Evolving Role of the Public Sector

 In Public Service Clouds: The Way of the Future, Jean-Philippe Veilleux imagines a future where the ideas proposed in a the recent paper Fed Cloud: the Future of Federal Work developed by GovLab –a think tank in the U.S.-based Deloitte Federal practice that focuses on innovation in the public sector -- has become a reality. 

Recognizing that governments are being asked to solve the problems of the 21st century with a workforce and managerial structure designed for a different era and acknowledges that traditional federal workforce models, designed before the computer age, Govlab suggests that, using cloud computing, the government could move to a more flexible workforce structure that could effectively react to unforeseen and ever changing events and better address the complex challenges of today.  So, rather than creating new departments and agencies to address emerging issues, cloud computing could transform how the federal government organizes its workforce.  Specifically Fed Cloud would:

• Offer Shared resources: Cloud applications reside on shared hardware, which is accessible by many users. In Fed Cloud, cloud workers reside in a central talent pool, accessible by many agencies.
• Be Cost effective: Cloud computing reduces the amount of overall hardware required, which can reduce maintenance cost and costs of associated personnel. Similarly, Fed Cloud could reduce the burden on each individual agency to maintain and manage a large workforce.
• Provide Dynamic Scalability: By pooling workers in a government-wide Fed Cloud, resources could be quickly shifted from low-need to high-need programs and agencies, without requiring individual agencies to hire new workers or create new organizations.

With this technology, a cadre of government-wide workers could help small mission-focused agencies adapt to evolving circumstances. This model would leverage changes in work, workers, workplaces, processes, and technologies.

The authors do recognize however that to seize the cloud’s possibilities, embracing such an approach would require a bold leader willing to take the first-steps towards this new technology and a a rethinking of traditional roles and human resource norms.