Cloud FinOps: Helping Governments Manage the Modernization of Citizen Services

The Government of Canada (GC) has a clear and ambitious vision for digital transformation: to enable delivery of government in the digital age for all Canadians. To achieve this vision, the GC has set four strategic goals:

1. Modernizing how they manage major IT systems
2. Providing services to people where and when they need them
3. Enabling better collaboration across government
4. Transforming how they work

These goals require modern, integrated systems and an unwavering focus on the needs and experience of citizens. They also require a new way of managing cloud costs and maximizing business value. This is where “Cloud Smart” comes in. It describes the approach the GC is taking to move workloads and applications to empower and accelerate transformation.

It is an operational framework and cultural shift that helps government organizations to optimize their use of cloud services by aligning them with expected outcomes and results, reducing technical debt, and enabling cross-functional collaboration. It builds on the previous “Cloud First” policy requirement, which challenged departmental CIOs to consider cloud as their preferred delivery model for IT. “Cloud Smart” recognizes that cloud is not always the best option for every application, and that decisions are more complex for existing applications. The approach guides CIOs to rationalize application portfolios and choose the most appropriate hosting model based on a set of principles.

“Cloud Smart” can help the GC achieve its digital transformation goals by:

• Supporting the modernization of IT systems by enabling agile and scalable cloud deployments, reducing technical debt, and leveraging advanced cloud features such as AI and big data.
• Enhancing the delivery of services to citizens by improving user experience, accessibility, and security of cloud-based applications, while ensuring compliance with privacy and data protection regulations.
• Facilitating better collaboration across government by fostering a culture of accountability, transparency, and innovation among cross-functional teams, while aligning cloud spending with business outcomes.
• Transforming how they work by empowering engineering teams to make data-driven decisions on cloud architecture and investment trade-offs, while providing them with the tools and guidance to optimize cloud costs.

The “Cloud Smart” approach is not only a technical discipline but also a cultural practice. It requires a shift in mindset from viewing cloud as a fixed cost to viewing it as a variable investment that can drive more revenue, customer satisfaction, and social impact. It also requires a collaborative approach that involves engineering, finance, technology, and business teams working together to achieve common goals. CFO’s have often been slower to engage in transformation conversation to some extent and, CIOs, working with CTOs and CDOs they can present the GC with an opportunity to leverage the cloud as an affordable, flexible and scalable catalyst for digital transformation that benefits both the government and the citizens. FinOps will be their friend on this journey.

How Cloud FinOps Can Support the Government of Canada's Digital Transformation Goals

The GC’s transformation goals require modern, integrated systems and an unwavering focus on the needs and experience of citizens. They also require a new way of managing cloud costs and maximizing business value. Cloud FinOps comes in can help.

It is an operational framework and cultural shift that brings technology, finance, and business together to drive financial accountability and accelerate business value realization through cloud transformation. Cloud FinOps can enable the GC to:

• Accelerate enterprise value realization and innovation
• Drive financial accountability and visibility
• Optimize cloud usage and cost efficiency
• Enable cross-organizational trust and collaboration
• Prevent sprawl of cloud spend

Practitioners focus on three key areas: cost optimization, forecasting, and accounting. In each of these areas, they use automation and cloud cost management solutions to improve efficiency and control costs.

It can help the GC achieve its digital transformation goals by:

1. Supporting the modernization of IT systems by enabling agile and scalable cloud deployments, reducing technical debt, and leveraging advanced cloud features such as AI and big data.
2. Enhancing the delivery of services to citizens by improving user experience, accessibility, and security of cloud-based applications, while ensuring compliance with privacy and data protection regulations.
3. Facilitating better collaboration across government by fostering a culture of accountability, transparency, and innovation among cross-functional teams, while aligning cloud spending with business outcomes.
4. Transforming how they work by empowering engineering teams to make data-driven decisions on cloud architecture and investment trade-offs, while providing them with the tools and guidance to optimize cloud costs.

Cloud FinOps requires the enterprise to move from viewing cloud as a fixed cost to viewing it as a variable investment that can drive more productivity, citizen satisfaction, and social impact. It also requires a collaborative approach that involves engineering, finance, technology, and business teams working together to achieve common goals.

GC has an opportunity to leverage Cloud FinOps as a catalyst for digital transformation that benefits both the government and the citizens. By adopting Cloud FinOps principles and practices, the GC can optimize its cloud spending, maximize its business value, and deliver government in the digital age for all Canadians.