Journals Proceedings

Abstract

Despite the numerous advantages of the public cloud governments are reluctant to deploy sensitive data in the public cloud because of lack of confidence about security. Governments are bound by legal and regulatory requirements and need a tailored public cloud solution that will offer them the level of governance they need over their data. Unfortunately, public cloud offerings are often standardised and providers do not offer governments what they need. The solution to this problem would be governments establishing a Service Level Agreement (SLA) through their relationship with the public cloud provider that gives government the confidence to place sensitive data in the public cloud. Towards a solution, this research examines the relationship between the government as a customer and the cloud provider in order to determine issues in the relationship that are contributing to this lack of confidence. The research is founded on theories and ideas about risk perception and tolerance, trust and collaboration for understanding the lack of confidence that governments have within the context of the relationship. Critical success factors of a successful government-cloud provider relationship are derived from the theories and used to inform the enquiry towards a new approach to the SLA relationship to increase government confidence in the public cloud.