In my former life, as chair of the New York City Council Contracts Committee, I opined in these pages about the value of cloud computing and the need to make it as easy as possible for city agencies to contract for cloud services and speed the transition of their operations from costly on-premise data centers to the cloud. The rationale was then, as it remains today, that cloud computing could make government more efficient and effective in the delivery of services to our constituents. Now, in my role as Chair of the Finance Committee, I believe it’s time to seriously consider the ability of the cloud to generate significant budgetary savings as well.
In terms of efficiency, the pandemic offered numerous case studies for how cloud computing could bolster government. As the world went into pandemic lockdown, governments couldn’t shut down and pause critical services to their citizens and so they had to find a way to keep working. To provide efficient and scalable services and allow numerous employees to successfully do their jobs remotely, government agencies needed to make a swift digital transformation into the cloud.
For a concrete example right here in the Tri-State area, consider that while many court systems nationwide had to stop proceedings, due to a smart investment in technology modernization and rapid development of a new electronic documents system, the New Jersey Court system was able to stay fully operational without interruption – even with 99 percent of its staff working from home. That is what I call efficiency. We just shouldn’t need a global pandemic to compel us to achieve such technological gains.
Along with advantages such as state-of-the-art security and the ability to incorporate A.I. and machine learning technologies in to an agency’s use of data, cloud computing also offers significant savings for local and municipal governments. Not only does it allow New York City agencies to pay for only as much cloud capacity as they need on a day-to-day basis, but we can also save substantial capital costs as the cloud does not require any physical hardware investments or data centers (or regular upgrades/updates to those legacy technologies). Plus, with so many companies now competing in the cloud space and so much innovation happening – from the big companies, such as Microsoft, Google and AWS to cloud startups based right here in the five boroughs – there has never been a better time to accelerate New York City’s commitment to cloud computing.
That’s why I’m so proud to have recently introduced legislation (Intro 540) that will require City government to undertake an overall evaluation of our City’s cloud usage and capabilities and consider potential “Cloud First” policies that will expedite our agencies’ move to the cloud and save us money! Let’s face facts: line items like the loss of federal funds, increased labor costs and an unprecedented migrant crisis have added significant budgetary pressures and so we have a responsibility to look to areas of potential savings both big and small, and cloud computing has proven it can generate significant saving that can be used on our other priorities.
Competing cities and states across the country have already implemented similar “Cloud First” policies (as did the federal government during the Obama Administration) as a common-sense tool for ensuring they are operating in the most cost-effective manner possible. It’s time to break the inertia and technology gap that too often limits innovation in municipal government and allow New York City to harness the power of the cloud that is already significantly benefitting many state and local governments. The fact is that with budget concerns facing us both this year and into the foreseeable future, we simply can’t afford to continue to try to do new things in the old ways. And so with apologies to Jerry McGuire fans, it’s time to let the cloud show us the money!
Council Member Justin Brannan represents the 47th Council District in Brooklyn and Chairs the New York City Council Finance Committee.
Justin Brannan , 2024-06-12 18:03:03
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