A Cloud Infrastructure for Collaborative Digital Public Services

Abstract

Looking back at the major developments of the previous years in the Internet and IT industry, it is more than certain that two of the most important innovations are cloud computing, which evidently takes processing power and IT provision to a whole new level, and Web2.0 service applications, that reveal the innovative thinking and development power of users, who in many cases are the architects of these applications. Despite this progress, focusing on the provision of public services reveals that until today little has been done in order to expose the real power of those two concepts. Cloud computing is in most cases regarded just as an alternative to having in premise infrastructures, while Web2.0 applications designed by third parties cannot be integrated in the public sector and are characterised as "promising initiatives that cannot go further". This paper targets the constantly increasing need for having more efficient and effective public sector services by trying to combine the benefits that derive by both the cloud computing and the open innovation concepts, and proposes a platform that could actually assist stakeholders to deploy their services towards meeting their needs, whether this refers to the exposure of public services over cloud infrastructures or to the creation of personalised composite public services.