| dc.description.abstract | Cloud computing, as a shifting paradigm, is expanding its “bandwagon effect” across industries worldwide. This is due to the several advantages of cloud computing that have been revealed by the public sectors (empirical setting of this study), including improved levels of flexibility and mobility, lower total cost of ownership, reduced energy savings and carbon missions. Most importantly, cloud computing can free government from building, maintaining and upgrading its infrastructures and technologies, and focus more on serving the citizens with optimised resources. Hence, this paper focuses on the readiness assessment of cloud-computing adoption within a Provincial Government of South Africa, which is in its cloud-computing embryonic phase. An extensive study of the literature on cloud-computing concepts, its characteristics, the possible non-technological readiness indicators for cloud-computing adoption, was conducted. This led to the identification of three main groups of readiness indicators: (i) Infrastructural indicators; (ii) organisational indicators; and (iii) environmental indicators. A conceptual model was then developed, according to these three main groups, with twelve sub-indicators. This model was subsequently tested in the empirical setting of the studied Provincial Government of South Africa by using the qualitative approach through the case-study methodology. The intended audience for this study are both academic and practitioners as it brings a conceptual model and the guidelines for assessing the government‟s readiness for the adoption of these cloud-computing technologies and services. | en_US |
