The first government agency to move into the cloud

The Swedish Exhibition Agency, a government agency under the Swedish Ministry of Culture, will be the first public authority to move into the cloud. The Swedish Exhibition Agency’s personnel have been working fully in the cloud with Google Apps since last Monday. 

“We are the first government agency in Sweden and, as far as we know, in the world to be in the cloud,” says Staffan Forssell, Director General of the Swedish Exhibition Agency.

“As we travel extensively in our global trends monitoring work and to visit collaborative partners in Sweden, moving all our IT into the cloud suited us down to the ground. We are aware of the risks but as we handle very little confidential information in our operation, this solution is perfect for us.”

“It is still too early to say how it will pan out, but the advantages include a low cost per user and we can offload a lot of our license management work,” says Jesper Cederlund, IT project manager at the Swedish Exhibition Agency. ”Another advantage is that we can access our data anywhere in the world and it always looks the same – whether it’s on our own computers, a mobile phone or at an Internet café somewhere.”

The Swedish Exhibition Agency has consulted a computer security expert who has performed an assessment of the data that we process. We only handle a small amount of confidential information and the only non-cloud part is the registration system which is separate.

The Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency (Kammarkollegiet), which is responsible for all public framework agreements in Sweden, finished drafting Kontorsstöd som molntjänst (a framework agreement offering cloud services for the public sector) in the spring. The Swedish Exhibition Agency was first to call off orders via the new framework agreement.

For more information, please contact:

Jesper Cederlund, IT Project Manager & Development Technician, Swedish Exhibition Agency

jesper.cederlund@riksutstallningar.se

Tel: +46 498 79 90 54