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Policy

Philippine CICT chairman cool on cloud computing

By Robin Hicks | 2 March 2009

The Chairman of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) in the Philippines has said that the “inherent risks” of cloud computing need to be addressed before government embraces it is a viable way of managing information.

In an interview with FutureGov, Ray Roxas-Chua said that the failure of Google’s email service last week had not changed his government’s view on cloud computing, which he says is “still a relatively nascent technology with inherent risks. The Gmail incident has not really affected our view of it.”

Looking to the future, the Cabinet Member said that the Philippine government would eventually warm to the idea of cloud computing. But it would not be one of the early adopters. “This is particularly true for government agencies that handle sensitive data,” he said. “There are still many security and reliability issues that need to be addressed before it becomes a viable alternative.”

He added: “The government has not yet seriously considered cloud computing, but the CICT continues to stay on top of the latest technological advances for possible implementation in government. Government agencies are not even comfortable hosting their data externally, so adoption of cloud computing is probably a long way off.

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