G-Cloud InnovationFostering economic growth through

Government Cloud Computing

GCloudInnovation.com

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Table of ContentsExecutive Summary..............................................................................................................................3

NIST – Global standards.............................................................................................................3Open sourcing best practices.......................................................................................................3

Digital Innovation Nation.....................................................................................................................4Digital Britain Switchover..........................................................................................................4Bridging the Economic Divide...................................................................................................5Cisco: Fostering Next Generation Clusters ................................................................................5

Open Government Compliance, as a Service.......................................................................................7Citizen CRM 2.0.........................................................................................................................7Open Civic Engagement.............................................................................................................8Open Linked Data.......................................................................................................................8

G-Cloud Architecture...........................................................................................................................9Utility Cloud Computing............................................................................................................9DevOps architecture: Enabling Web Business Evolution.........................................................10Application Store for Government (ASG)................................................................................11NIST : Outsourced Community Clouds....................................................................................12Inter-Cloud : EHR inter-operability..........................................................................................13

Conclusion..........................................................................................................................................14About the author.................................................................................................................................15

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Executive SummaryThe UK’s ‘G-Cloud’ initiative is a comprehensive and compelling vision for G-Cloud: Government Cloud Computing.

Their site provides a thoroughly detailed set of documents including materials for defining the strategic business case, governance and commercial models, technical architectures and implementation strategy.

As such it can act as the definitive reference best practice maturity model for G-Cloud.

Within 5-10 years the program will establish the G-Cloud as the predominant model for ICT delivery in the public sector, involving a wholesale shift to utility services being the norm.

NIST – Global standardsThe UK is not alone in pioneering these standards for G-Clouds, indeed the USA's standards organization NIST has become a hugely important body for defining the reference architectures for Cloud computing that many others are following.

As will be discussed later, NIST are defining specific reference models for implementing Government Cloud Computing, such as 'Outsourced Community Clouds'. These provides a common frame of reference for agencies to follow to safely repeat their research best practices.

Open sourcing best practicesAlthough NIST is based in the USA, and the G-Cloud a UK program, the heart of the opportunity these trends represent is to globalize and 'open source' the best practices they are defining.

G-Cloud offers the usual base platform of Cloud-enabled improvements, aiming to reduce costs by £2-4 billion per annum through data-centre consolidation, improving their operations through virtualization et al, but the really huge benefits will come from how it changes ICT procurement models and the compounding effect this has in improving how all of government itself works.

Indeed the most powerful aspects of the UK initiative is the vision for the role it will play in transforming government and society as a whole.

The primary benefit of G-Cloud will an international collaboration that enables the creation of G-Cloud Applications that can be re-distributed and executed anywhere else, sharing the best practices the software embodies.

Prior policy work from the Cabinet Office that has fed into the G-Cloud program includes their Open Source, Open Standards and Re-use: Government Action Plan, which sought to help encourage the uptake of FOSS but more importantly enable better reuse of best practices and systems throughout Government.

These improvements are best explained through one of the world's leading Open Government authorities, Beth Noveck. In 'Open Grantmaking' she describes how her pioneering OG work can be applied in these areas to greatly maximize how much social impact can be achieved through government grants.

"In practice, this means that if a community college wins a grant to create a videogame to teach how to install solar panels, everyone will have the benefit of that knowledge. They will be able to play the game for free. In addition, anyone can translate it into Spanish or Russian or use it as the basis to create a new game to teach how to do a home energy retrofit."

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Digital Innovation NationThe UK’s G-Cloud plan is such a strong template for a Government Cloud Computing model because of the strategic vision for transformation that drives it, and the related links to other government policies it will positively impact to achieve this.

Digital Britain SwitchoverIn particular the critical piece is the link between Cloud computing and how it will enable the Digital Britain policy, improving the nation’s overall commercial competitiveness through new technology and skills modernization, and simultaneously also the efficiency of the government too through the ‘Digital Switchover’ agenda.

“Digital Switchover” refers to government agencies being obliged to ‘go digital’ in the same way analogue TV was decommissioned and replaced by Digital TV.

In this case they refer to government services, like tax returns, Student Loans, Companies House Registrations, electoral roll registrations and so forth, and how they will be migrated to be serviced online only.

Given many of these are still paper-based, and the sheer size of the associated costs and complexities of such manual methods of workflow, an aggressive policy to transform them to online versions will yield an enormous efficiency gain.

The smart ‘double whammy’ is that this approach can be used as an innovation stimulus too. The software that is used to achieve these new online systems can be sourced from new local entrepreneurs, who can then expand internationally to supply them to other governments too.

The centrepiece of the UK’s G-Cloud strategy is their ASG – Applications Store for Government, where:

• Encourage innovation and broaden competition: The G-Cloud and ASG should encourage suppliers to provide innovative solutions to the Public Sector and broaden competition in the Public Sector ICT marketplace to encourage SME and niche suppliers.

• Empowering Business Change: New solutions for the Public Sector business should be built using shared components for deployment onto a shared infrastructure.

This defines such a significant step in the evolution of Cloud computing not because of the nature of how they plan to deploy virtualization, but because of changes at a higher level : How they plan to purchase software, the nature of how that software is implemented, and the resulting stimulus effect on the economy, and this will enable achievement of critically important business benefits listed in the Strategic Business Case, most notably:

Enabling a new, democratized approach to business change and IT enablement, where new ideas and those developed by others, can be easily trialled by a few users.”

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Bridging the Economic DivideFundamentally the most powerful impacts will be felt by the G-Cloud program when it is linked as an enabling technology to other key political policies.

In particular the ability to 'Bridge the Economic Divide' is the most profound and important for the 21st century. The G-Cloud program is defined by the UK Cabinet Office, which is accompanied by an equally visionary policy for the reinvention of their social welfare systems, their Social Investment strategy.

It's the ability to easily repeat best practices that is key to real impact for these programs.

For example the Guid Life project in Scotland won the AOL Innovation in the Community award for its work in using open source communities to connect social groups like the elderly with youth groups, playing a catalyst role in Bridging the Economic Divide through providing a “MicroVenturing portal”.

In the same way MicroFinance plays a key role in supporting social entrepreneurs, ‘MicroVenturing’ similarly lowers the barriers to entry, enabling social entrepreneurs to become self-sustaining and reduce their reliance on grants.

Micro-site VenturesThe portal also included an important feature of ‘micro-sites’. These were simple tools that enabled non-technical social entrepreneurs to publish their own web site, and publish it into the directory within the site. To get their organization off the ground they needed what all others do too, like a web site to showcase their presence and attract customers and volunteers, and press promotions to announce this to the world.

Social organizations originate in response to a social need ‘at the coal face’ and therefore typically start very small, often with only one staff member and perhaps two or three helpful volunteers. Therefore becoming commercially proficient is often too significant a challenge to overcome, and so by aggregating their needs we were able to develop centralized, shared services for them to take advantage of to meet this need.

Cisco: Fostering Next Generation Clusters As the Canadian Governments' Digital Advantage white paper highlights, Governments themselves can play a catalyst role in enabling these new innovations:

"Governments can play an important role in promoting private sector innovation and driving ICT uptake by acting as model users and leading by example, by being an early adopter and demanding purchaser of emerging and next generation technologies like Green IT and Cloud computing.”

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The role the technology can play in addressing these issues is demonstrated through the recent UK Digital Britain innovation policy. The report outlined that the government is looking to improve service delivery and reduce costs through adoption of "Government cloud computing, the “G-Cloud”, and they also describe the enabling role it would play in making the nation itself more innovative.

"with Cloud building on next generation broadband with high definition video and also more revolutionary applications. These will include tele-presence, allowing for much more flexible working patterns, e-healthcare in the home and for small businesses the increasing benefits of access to cloud computing which substantially cuts costs and allows much more rapid product and service innovation."

Cisco further build on this to describe how the technologies can reinvent how governments approach initiatives to stimulate innovation.

Traditionally governments have based their approaches to economic stimulus on the ‘cluster model‘ developed by Michael Porter, the business management guru, and Cisco proposes this model itself can be evolved.

In their white papers ‘Next Generation Clusters’ (14-page PDF) and ‘Network-Powered Growth‘ (15-page PDF) Cisco lays out some powerful ideas for modernizing the fundamental concepts of how these work.

The titles of these papers demonstrate the important benefits this can bring: “Creating Innovation Hubs to Boost Economic Growth” and “How Governments Can Serve as Catalysts for Sustained Economic Growth“ highlight how government can approach their R&D spending differently to achieve more economic productivity and success.

They describe how the original cluster model can be modernized so that governments can accelerate economic development, in the following main ways:

• From geographically-based to community-driven • From locally processed innovation to open, borderless innovation • From technology-driven to technology-enabled

They describe a critical success factor of three-way collaboration between universities, government and the private sector, what they call the ‘Triple Helix’ effect.

“with the goal of a new level of excellence, clusters are taking advantage of the connection capacities of the “Triple Helix” model, which combines government, business and public research in the development of knowledge-based innovation systems.”

Cisco states:

“Technology should be harnessed to enable growth in all industry sectors (as opposed to focusing solely on hubs that rely on technological innovation). The degree of availability, quality, and efficiency of web infrastructure supporting the hub will determine the strength of these digital communities and the pace of innovation.”

Implementing a new model that fosters cocreation, coproduction, mutual evaluation, and cross-industry investments will require significant cultural changes, greater trust in individuals, and the acceptance of a new novel form of collaboration. At different levels and without predefined hierarchy, these community-driven hubs will thrive by involving virtual residents in a global dialogue.

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Open Government Compliance, as a ServiceFundamentally the objective of G-Cloud is to enable 'Open Government Cloud Computing'.

Programs such as the Whitehouse initiative and the Canadian Resolution have placed obligations upon Government agencies to make Government more transparent in terms of how accountable it is to the public, more Open to group decision-making, dialogue and public participation, and more Open in terms of technology and data.

This requires quick implementation of a new set of technologies, exactly what Cloud Computing is ideal for.

This overall trend has been described as ‘Wiki Government’ by Beth Noveck, the Open Government leader for the USA, who designed and led the ‘Peer to Patent’ project, radically transforming how the patent application process works by utilizing these “crowdsourcing” models. She has authored a book of the same name to explain further.

For Canadian government agencies this can be related directly to their own Open Government resolution, which calls upon Canadian government to embrace the same approach: “Open government is linked to access to information legislation. However, it extends the concepts inherent in these laws to promote an entirely new way of viewing the role of government and the participation of citizens in it.”

Citizen CRM 2.0Naturally re-inventing the relationship between citizens and Governments will impact keenly in areas like CRM.

As an example recently the City of Ottawa released an RFP for a Citizen Service Management (CSM) solution that can unite all of their service departments into a consistent customer experience.

Like most large organizations the city operates an estate of legacy applications to provide services like permits, licencing, police enforcement dispatch and incident tracking, maintenance scheduling and so forth, and they want to provide a singuar user interface to these via 311 call centres, web sites, kiosks, counters, emails, mobile other access channels for their residents.

This is a significant challenge, as not only must they provide streamlined CRM access to Government services, but the Open Government Directive requires them to open up these models to allow more collaborative citizen engagement into the service delivery itself.

Therefore this makes options like Open311 especially pertinent to these projects. This an Open Source initiative for exactly this purpose that demonstrates the benefits go even further, extending to include Open Data and Open Innovation too.

Open311 is part of the OpenPlans suite, which blends together open source software with Open

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Data, visual mapping software and dynamic citizen-engagement models.

There are numerous case studies that demonstrate the innovative new ways to engage the public into government process that this combination enables, like video journalism and Landgate Collaborative Mapping. Ottawa has requirements like their ‘Potholes Report’ that could be effectively addressed through this type of approach.

Open Civic EngagementThese new models are known as 'Open Civic Engagement', and there are various ways in which they can be achieved, further highlighting the value of Cloud Computing in its different forms.

A very good example is described in this presentation, where the slide show talks through how Plone, the open source CMS (Content Management System) can be used in conjunction with Salesforce.com to create a very dynamic, Web 2.0 e-business solution for the Oregon Environmental Council Eco-Healthy Child Care unit.

Plone can be run on IaaS Cloud providers, so as well as harnessing the SaaS aspects of Cloud via Salesforce.com, this can be further maximized through utilizing a social media CMS for additional value adds.

Open Linked DataOpen Data is a very popular topic within the Open Government conversation, with the UK in particular leading a number of very exciting innovations in this area via data.gov.uk, such as launching a Public Data Corporation.

This is part of a compelling strategy to make the Government more transparent, given a powerhouse of a foundation by the fact Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, sits on the Transparency Board.

Sir Tim explains Linked Data, and the fact that it's 'Open Linked Data' that's critical, rather than just Open Data, is that the linking part is key to broadening and maturing the use of this type of technology, including making it more secure to share a wider base of information.

Currently Governments will only publish Open Data that doesn't include personal identity type data, meaning it's somewhat limited in the functionality you can use it for.

In contrast Open Linked Data will incorporate aspects like 'Link Contracts' that can enforce privacy rules, meaning the controls of the data are built into it and won't require this kind of external supervision.

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G-Cloud ArchitectureThis demanding array of new applications and organizational models will be achieved through an underlying G-Cloud Architecture – A technical design to make all levels of IT available 'aaS' – As a Service.

By using innovative new technologies that can then be replicated scaled up and out through Cloud Computing, transformation of government will be achieved through harnessing the community effects of open source approaches, as well as the technical architecture.

Utility Cloud ComputingRecently Elections Canada published an RFP for their web hosting requirements, providing an ideal scenario to focus on for identifying new solutions and best practices for Government Cloud Computing (G-Cloud).

It typifies the type of solution needed to migrate other Government agencies from a traditional web hosting approach to a new Cloud computing paradigm, describing exactly the technical features required to make such a transition. These features represent the common components that other agencies will also require, and thus define a framework for G-Cloud architectures.

Elections Canada have stipulated requirements for two main transformational journeys:

• The move to a Utility Cloud Computing service model

• Adoption of new software development methods

As a web site for voter elections, Elections Canada is also the poster child for the core value of a Cloud computing approach. On that one election day their web site receives a spike of traffic that accounts for almost a third of their traffic for the entire year.

Their monthly rate is 200,000 visits but on the polling day this rockets to 700,000 for that one day alone. Out of a total 2.4m hits per annum, almost 30% occur within one day, meaning their web site infrastructure must be large enough able to cater for a traffic ceiling of 700,000 hits, but on every other day experience a demand that is barely 1% of this.

That's a lot of equipment to sit idle for 364 days of the year and therefore not an optimum use of taxpayers monies, and so now they're looking to exploit the Cloud trend and address this.

The fundamental value of Cloud computing is of course that its “elastic”, so EC can migrate to an environment that can scale to this level but only when needed on these rare occasions. For the remaining time they only pay for what they use at the much lower levels.

EC states requirements for:

"a computing capacity-on-demand operating model"

"develop cloud computing capabilities; which support not only infrastructure capacity improvements but also provides new and emerging opportunities that leverage application level revitalization using a flexible and dynamic provisioning model"

"develop value-added services to support current and future development projects,

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pilots, proof-of-concepts and other web business initiatives"

How this new approach will impact their current set up is actually nicely demonstrated through their own contract terms listed in the RFP, specifically where they define the need for capacity change-controls (buying more servers, more bandwidth etc.) which they articulate through:

"Provide additional capacity within 10 working days." Manually re-configuring infrastructure to meet demand, and taking up to 10 days to do so, is a symptom of the traditional web hosting approach, where the move to Cloud will make this requisition possible within seconds, automatically.

Cloud Computing allows applications to leverage the flexibility of leased Virtual Machines to scale organically, where the Cloud environment monitors http response times and other critical performance factors, and automatically provisions and de-provisions new IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) as traffic dictates.

DevOps architecture: Enabling Web Business EvolutionWhile this is the core benefit of Cloud Computing, it is not the only benefit that Elections Canada is seeking from this upgrade journey.

They also want to transform the nature of how they engineer software entirely, not just change the hosting model for it. This is a double whammy known as “'DevOps”, referring to the integration of Development (writing software) and Operations (running software), within the context of an overall Quality Management System (QMS) so that the site can be changed quicker while also increasing the safety and uptime.

In this regard Elections Canada struggles with the same challenge most legacy web hosting environments do. Their site operates through a variety of custom software modules written on .net, C# and Javascript, and not only does it cater for the main web site but also a number of specific business processes for how the organization works too.

This includes smaller app functions, like 'Political parties fiscal returns' and 'Candidates contributions and expenses' through to significant business workflows, like the ENR System - Election Night Results, which manages the process of Returning Officers uploading voting results, and the VIS - Voter Information Service, which enables citizens to self-service their requests for more information on their local activities.

In short most of their mission critical process runs over the web, a process that Elections Canada describe as "Web Business Evolution".The challenge is that it is currently achieved through a somewhat tangled web of custom code and ad-hoc applications, and so through a DevOps framework that Elections Canada are calling their Application DEF - Delivery Environment Framework, EC wants to transform how efficiently and quickly they can develop, test and deploy new online applications by enhancing the structures of this environment as part of the move to the Cloud.

They cite examples of projects they're working such as the 'FAST' Project - Field Application Systems Transformation, where new web applications will be deployed to support new ways of working for the Returning Officers, an eRegistration Project where voters can self-service validate their voter registration records, and the big daddy of them all: iVoting - online election voting.

Providing the tools and hosting environment that enables EC to deploy these types of new applications quicker, is where the strategic opportunity is for G-Cloud hosting providers.

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Elections Canada now sees itself as a "web business", meaning their primary business processes are executed through the context of their web site, and they want a new level of platform to reflect this strategic priority.

Application Store for Government (ASG)As well as identifying their needs for Cloud hosting, Elections Canada also states their appetite for a much broader suite of services on an ongoing basis that goes well beyond that of web hosting, what defines the context for the 'ASG' – The Application Store for Government.

This is the Apps Store component of the G-Cloud architecture; an apps store like for the iPhone or for Facebook, but tailored for the requirements of Government.

They start with a high level statement of interest in:

- "advanced data storage capabilities, new telco services, emerging mobile computing platforms".

and follow with a list of other value add services they would consider buying in the future, ranging through managed email and collaboration, content and document management, office productivity tools, file storage and secure remote access, amongst many others.

The ASG will provide the online “shopping basket” site to browse G-Cloud applications of these different types, with options to deploy them to their preferred G-Cloud provider.

Elections Canada describe this as an underlying “Multi-Tier System Architecture”, where common services for authentication, authorization and auditing are built into the Cloud environment via a Web Services Reference Model.

This would provide the core mechanics for both the utility computing environment, where new IaaS is provisioned on demand, and also software engineering where the ASG facilitates common architecture like Identity single sign-on.

iVotingBuilding these capabilities directly into the hosting environment itself is how Elections Canada anticipate they'll be able to realize the compelling vision of their 'Web Business Evolution'.

A strong platform of Identity-centric architecture will be key to the security and features needed to more easily build the future applications they're looking for, like eRegistrations, and the real flagship scenario: iVoting.

iVoting - The ability for citizens to vote online rather than via paper-based ballots, highlights how thorough the security systems must be and also the full scope of the potential that these technology trends represent.

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NIST : Outsourced Community CloudsWhere the ASG defines the applications that will be created and shared, 'Trusted Clouds' will be the hosting environments that operate them, where the Trust aspect refers to the required security model that is applied to ensure its safe for Government data. The G-Cloud program also stipulates a compliance program for service providers to be certified as compliant with these measures.

In NIST Cloud terms this is referred to as 'IaaS' – Infrastructure as a Service, a category of Cloud service, and within this they also have definitions for specific implementations ('Deployment Models'), such as the 'Community Cloud'.

NIST defines this as an instance of Cloud computing that is shared between organizations which have shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations).

They're ideal for when a number of partnering organizations identify common needs and functions that they each duplicate, such as payroll or procurement, and they maximize their own individual efficiencies by consolidating them into shared services that they all make use of.

Community Clouds allows them to each consolidate their data-centre infrastructure costs and workload, to operate a single platform that runs the same software they all use.

A real-world example best illustrates this.

In January a Canadian Healthcare organization 3SO published this RFP for services to build a Community Cloud, more specifically what NIST describe as the 'On-Site' version referring to it being operated in-house. There is also an 'Outsourced' version when a third-party supplier hosts and manages it.

The 3SO project will utilize VMware vSphere to create a platform for running virtualized Microsoft Sharepoint & Dynamics to implement an iteration of the eHealth Ontario ‘RM&R‘ eReferal process, including:

• Development of a regional repository to securely share clinical documents• Pilot development of web integration to tie the CDR content into portals• Pilot integrations to hospital information systems in both LHIN’s• Pilot integrations to primary care physician EMR’s in both LHIN’s

These capabilities would then be shared by the ‘LHIN’ members of the 3SO network. As such it sets the leading best practice for implementing the eReferral process via Cloud technologies, and as such again highlights the core value of the ASG:

This specific configuration, for a 'Clinical Document Repository', can be open sourced so that it can be shared with others and implemented on a common G-Cloud platform.

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Inter-Cloud : EHR inter-operabilityThese environments will not only cater for the utility IT services but will also provide key functions like better integration between applications, so help accelerate adoption of innovative new IT in key areas.

For example consider this Globe news piece, about adoption of new EMR (Electronic Medical Record) technology, that is using barcoding to eliminate medication errors.

It highlights that they're following EMR best practices from HIMSS, which has an adoption maturity level that goes up to a final Level 7, where your entire operations are EMR-enabled. Where the USA now has 55 hospitals reporting in at level 7, Canada has yet to report any. None.

The Canadian Institute for Health Improvement estimates that medication errors affect more than one million patients each year, with more than 700 of them dying as a result. The barcoding system is intended to reduce this by eliminating the errors that can occur in more manual processes, so it's quite obvious the societal as well as economic costs of low levels of technology investment and uptake.

In particular the article highlights the challenges of integration between applications:

“So far, Dr Michael Freeman, a cardiologist at St. Michael’s explained, an individual hospitals records are limited in their connectivity to family doctors and local pharmacies. When a patient is discharged, we will provide an electronic letter to the family doctor and a typed out letter to the pharmacy. Those healthcare practitioners would not be able to directly update the patient’s record so that they are in synch with St. Michael’s records.”

The technology challenges here are also the same as they are for other organizations. Typically each organization in the Healthcare supply chain has their own IT system, where a doctor may operate their own ‘EHR’ – Electronic Health Records database, whereas the pharmacy operates the drug information systems, and so on.

Therefore the main challenge for EHR rollout is interoperation between these systems, and it’s this function that Cloud computing is ideal for.

The Canadian Privacy Commissioner explains how a Community G-Cloud would cater for this:

“it is also possible that the Government of Canada might create a “private cloud” infrastructure internally to facilitate information sharing, or even that some or all government institutions might make use of a cloud infrastructure for data processing or storage.”

On slide 38 of this 48 slide presentation, the technical experts from eHealth Ontario explain the various XML open standards that would be built into this environment to make this possible, such as:

• WS-* Web services for Gateway operations: UDDI, WSDL, WS-I • SAML for user authentication

• Ehealth data exchange: SNOMED-CT , LOINC , HL7

With the eReferral process shipping personal medical record data around it’s subject to PHIA regulation., and so privacy controls will be needed, highlighting programs like the OASIS privacy model.

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Cloud Services ConnectorWith this being the On-Site version of the Community Cloud, one of the key question is therefore how and why might this be linked to public Cloud facilities.

The key trigger point for linking environment to the external Cloud is highlighted by one of 3SO’s future requirements. Their RFP states they will first deploy a new

ActiveDirectory based authentication system, and that later this will need connected into Government federated Identity systems, like ‘ONE-ID‘.

ConclusionOrganizations like 3SO in Canada are pioneering the implementation of new working models that improve how Healthcare can be delivered. By open sourcing this configuration as a G-Cloud Application will make it repeatable for any other Healthcare organization, in Ontario right through to anywhere in the rest of the world.

By applying Open Government principles and making these systems accessible to entrepreneurs, Governments can further compound the benefits that will be enjoyed by catalyzing a Digital Innovation supply chain that can be channelled towards deep transformation of society.

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About the authorNeil McEvoy is the Founder and President of the Cloud Best Practices Network.

He has a track record of pioneering Cloud Computing solutions for over fifteen years, with a particular specialism in SaaS, founding one of Europe's first pure-play ASPs at aged 28. The App Tap, a joint venture with Microsoft was funded by the UK's leading Internet entrepreneurs including Cliff Stanfords Redbus Interhouse, the original founders of Pipex and others, and pioneered the first Content Management Portal via a SaaS architecture.

Neil has repeatedly brought a number of leading edge Cloud products to market, including the SaaS-based Microsoft Unified Comms suite for British Telecom, Europe's first enterprise web hosting product set for PSINet and the use of Open Source applications like Drupal for Web 2.0 portals On Demand. Recently he has also founded the Cloud Ventures Network to help other entrepreneurs launch new Cloud businesses.

Upon emigrating to Canada Neil has immersed himself in the Government sector, including working for management consulting firm PwC and specializing in developing and applying Open Government Maturity Models to the Canadian Government system. This includes launching the first Open Innovation e-procurement portal OpenRFP.net.

Neil can be reached on neil.mcevoy@l5consulting.net

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