A Mixed Methods Systematic Analysis of Issues and Factors Influencing Organizational Cloud Computing Adoption and Usage in the Public Sector: Initial Findings

AI summary

Overview

Research area: Public sector information technology governance and organizational adoption of cloud computing, framed within AI safety and ethics as a broader socio-technical concern.

Technical level: Beginner-Friendly. The work is a systematic analysis of organizational and policy factors rather than a technical treatment of cloud architecture or engineering.

Scope: A systematic analysis that synthesizes existing knowledge on why public sector organizations do or do not adopt and use cloud computing, serving as the initial phase of a larger research program.

What This Paper Is About

Governments increasingly want the cost savings, innovation potential, and resilience that cloud computing can bring to public sector organizations, but actually adopting and using it turns out to be hard. Public sector organizations encounter a range of organizational and operational problems along the way. This paper is the first stage of a broader research effort: it gathers and synthesizes what is already known about cloud adoption and utilization in the public sector, so that public sector decision makers and stakeholders have a reliable, evidence-based basis for improving IT practice and policy.

Key Contributions

1. A systematic synthesis of existing knowledge on organizational cloud computing adoption and utilization specifically within the public sector, consolidating scattered prior work into one analysis.

2. Identification of the issues and factors that shape whether public sector organizations adopt and continue to use cloud computing, framed as organizational and operational concerns rather than purely technical ones.

3. An evidence-based foundation for practice and policy, intended to translate the synthesized knowledge into actionable insights for public sector decision makers and stakeholders.

4. A staged research design, positioning this systematic analysis as the initial phase that will feed into forthcoming case studies of specific public sector cloud stakeholders.

Main Findings

• Cloud computing is framed as an essential enabling technology: The abstract states that cloud computing has been shown to be essential for enabling public sector organizations, positioning it as foundational rather than optional infrastructure.

• A specific set of potential benefits is claimed: Reduced information technology infrastructure costs, increased innovation potential, and improved resource resilience and scalability.

• Realization of those benefits is not straightforward: Despite governments intensifying their efforts, the abstract reports that cloud computing adoption and usage proves challenging.

• The challenges are organizational and operational: Public sector organizations face a variety of organizational and operational issues, not simply technical obstacles.

• Detailed results are not stated in the abstract: The abstract labels this work as "initial findings" but does not report specific findings, themes, counts, or outcomes. Any such specifics would appear in the full paper, which was not available.

Methodology in Plain English

The author conducted a systematic analysis — a structured effort to locate, review, and bring together the existing body of knowledge on cloud computing adoption and use in the public sector, rather than collecting new data from scratch. The paper describes itself as mixed methods, meaning the analysis draws on more than one type of evidence or approach rather than a single method. This synthesis is deliberately positioned as the first stage of a larger project; the plan is to follow it with case studies of specific public sector cloud stakeholders, which would add detailed, context-specific evidence to the broader picture the systematic analysis builds. The stated purpose of doing it this way is to produce insights that are reliable and evidence-based, so that they can actually inform decisions rather than just describe a landscape. The abstract does not specify which databases, search strategies, inclusion criteria, or analytical techniques were used.

Why This Matters

Impact on research: The paper establishes a synthesized baseline of knowledge about public sector cloud adoption and explicitly sets up a research program — systematic analysis now, stakeholder case studies later. That structure gives subsequent work a defined point of departure and a stated purpose of connecting evidence to practice.

Real-world applications:

• Government IT investment decisions: Public sector decision makers can use the synthesized issues and factors to anticipate organizational obstacles when planning cloud migration or expansion.
• Public sector policy design: Agencies and oversight bodies can shape cloud-related policy around the organizational and operational realities the analysis surfaces, rather than treating adoption as a purely procurement or technical matter.
• Change management and workforce planning: Because the identified issues are organizational and operational, they speak to how staff, processes, and internal structures need to adapt, not just to what technology is deployed.
• Cost, innovation, and resilience strategy: The stated benefits — lower infrastructure costs, greater innovation potential, improved scalability and resilience — are the outcomes public sector organizations are trying to secure, making it important to understand what blocks them.

Industry relevance: Cloud providers, systems integrators, and consultancies serving government clients benefit from understanding the non-technical friction points that slow public sector adoption, since those factors shape how services must be delivered and supported.

Future Directions

• Forthcoming case studies of specific public sector cloud stakeholders: The abstract explicitly commits to these as the next phase, which would ground the systematic analysis in concrete organizational contexts.
• Which organizational issues dominate in practice: The abstract confirms that organizational and operational issues exist but does not enumerate them; the case studies and the full paper are the natural place for that detail.
• Turning synthesis into actionable guidance: Moving from identified factors to specific, usable recommendations for decision makers and stakeholders is an open task the abstract frames as the purpose of the work.
• Generalizability across public sector contexts: Whether factors identified in a synthesized body of knowledge hold across different agencies, levels of government, and jurisdictions is a question the larger research effort appears designed to address.

Target Audience

Public sector decision makers, IT leaders, and policy officials weighing or managing cloud adoption; researchers studying government technology adoption and organizational change; and vendors or consultants who support public sector cloud programs. Because the framing is organizational rather than technical, the paper is accessible to readers without a deep cloud engineering background.

Authors’ abstract

Cloud computing has been shown to be an essential enabling technology for public sector organizations PSOs and offers numerous potential benefits, including reduced information technology infrastructure costs, increased innovation potential, and improved resource resilience and scalability. Despite governments' intensifying efforts to realize the benefits of this technology, cloud computing adoption and usage proves to be challenging, posing a variety of organizational and operational issues for PSOs. This systematic analysis constitutes the initial phase of a larger research effort that involves forthcoming case studies of specific public sector cloud stakeholders; it aims to identify and synthesize the available knowledge on organizational cloud computing adoption and utilization in the public sector to provide public sector decision makers and stakeholders with reliable, evidence-based, actionable insights that inform and improve public sector IT practice and policy.