Realising the Australian Government Cloud Strategy: The Gill Framework

Abstract

Australian Government Cloud Computing Strategy Direction paper discusses the whole-of-a-government approach to cloud computing adoption and provides the following vision statement.

“Agencies may choose cloud-based services where they demonstrate value for money and adequate security”.

This article discuses how to put this vision into practice by using The Gill Framework for Adaptive Enterprise Service System Architecture.

Introduction

The Gill Framework (Gill 2012) provides an adaptive enterprise service system architecture driven approach that can be used to define, operate, manage, support and adapt the Government or G-Cloud environment (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Gill Framework Version 1.0 (Gill 2012)

The Gill Framework has two main layers: inner layer and outer layer.

Inner Layers: Enterprise Architecture (Adaptive Enterprise Service System)

The inner layer of The Gill Framework presents a whole-of-a-government as a living system of service systems (e.g. holistic view of the government organisations, agencies, units), which is called the adaptive enterprise service system architecture. The adaptive enterprise service system architecture has four elements.

• Defining  
• Operating  
• Managing
• Supporting

Defining – define and understand the boundary or scope of a government cloud before commissioning any cloud work.

Operating – operate government cloud as a trusted cloud service system factory that would have the capability to seamlessly mash-up and integrate the in-house built and externally sourced human and IT services (reusable and non-reusable) from partners and collaborators to meet the changing demands of government agencies and citizens. Cloud service system factory approach to government cloud is important as it draws attention to the re-usability of services to support the whole-of-a-government strategy.

Managing - integrate the core management disciplines (e.g. enterprise cloud requirements, strategy, architecture, project and service management) for managing the government cloud environment for the delivery of situation-specific cloud-enabled adaptive service systems for value-creation.

Supporting – augment core management disciplines through support disciplines such as government cloud model, services supply chain, intelligence, asset library and method engineering.

Outer Layers: Enterprise Architecture Adaptation Method

The outer layer presents the five-stage enterprise architecture (adaptive enterprise service system architecture) adaptation method that can be used to guide the continuous adaptation of the government cloud environment.

The adaptation method has the following five key elements.

• Context
• Rationalisation
• Assessment
• Realisation
• Unrealisation

Context – continuously scan and sense opportunities for improvement or changes at the whole-of-a-government or enterprise level (Horizontal).

Rationalisation – continuously scan and sense opportunities for improvement or changes at the individual capability or service level (Vertical).

Assessment – use enterprise architecture (cloud-enabled adaptive enterprise service system architecture) as a lens and interpret and analyse change opportunities identified both at the context and rationalisation stages. Make recommendations.

Realisation – decide and take action to realise the change recommendations.

Unrealisation - defer opportunities that are not relevant at this stage and could be reconsidered in future.

Summary:

The inner layer of the framework, as guided by the outer layer, enables the enterprise service system architecture adaptation or agility. This integrated framework can be used as a guide and toolkit for managing and aligning complex government wide cloud-enabled adaptation or transformation initiatives.

The synopsis of The Gill Framework V1.0 has been published in the following book.  

Reference:

Asif Q. Gill (2012). The Gill Framework: Adaptive Enterprise Architecture Toolkit. http://www.amazon.com/The-Gill-Framework-Architecture-ebook/dp/B00APCUJWC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1355876868&sr=8-2&keywords=the+gill+framework%2C+asif