Warwickshire piloting public Cloud email solution

Warwickshire County Council has taken the bold step - working closely with the Cabinet Office for support - to pilot use of a Cloud-based email service, Google's Google Mail.

The body says a move to a Cloud-based email option could include benefits like greater flexibility of working and reduced costs of licences for email and that if it were to make a full move over it could save around £250,000 annually.

The project is being positioned as part of the government's ongoing plans for a G-Cloud and is said to be the first example of a big UK authority providing email services via a public Cloud.

For its part, Warwickshire is characterising the trial as part of ongoing remote working/hot desking initiatives and contribute to property rationalisation moves.

In the Warwickshire test case 100 staff are now trialling the system between now and year-end, after which an audit will be conducted. If any decision is made to roll out Google Mail beyond that cohort, nothing will happen until summer 2012 earliest.

Staff on the trial will be playing with Mail on smartphones and tablet devices as well as conventional desktops and laptops and the council wants to see much less use of insecure USBs or storage of sensitive data on staff hard disks out of the pilot.

The Cabinet Office is believed to be looking for clues on how key issues like security, service management, information assurance and procurement might come out of the experiment and be applied to wider G-Cloud implementation.

Chris Chant, programme director for G-Cloud within the Cabinet Office, told an ICT news site the pilot was an important step forward in revolutionising the provision of ICT services in government and that, "By exploiting innovations in this manner, government will transform public sector ICT estate into one that is agile, cost effective and environmentally sustainable."

Warwickshire currently employs over 15,000 staff, not counting firefighters and teachers, but is looking to slim that figure down by around 12.5% by 2013.