UK.gov CIO speaks out on sheep and clouds

He wanders lonely as a cloud

By John Oates • Get more from this author

Posted in Government, 19th June 2009 15:32 GMT

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The government chief information officer is eating his own dog food by getting involved in a discussion of cloud computing on Google groups.

The cloud computing interoperability forum was discussing the implications of plans for government-created nationwide cloud computing - that government departments would use cloud computing as a way to extend shared services.

So far so dull but then up popped John Suffolk - the UK government's chief information officer. He said moves to the "G-Cloud" would be based on getting standard desktop designs, sorting out telecoms infrastructure, data centres and pushing more open source and open standard technology. Suffolk said this would all help move towards a Government App Store, as long as European procurement laws could be satisfied.

The post was warmly welcomed by other contributors but did raise a little suspicion.

Does the UK government's CIO really have an email address that points at a website devoted to rare breed sheep?

Well a quick call to the Cabinet Office reveals that yes it does.

When not sorting out government technology problems John Suffolk is a keen breeder of rare sheep - especially Soay and Boreray sheep.

In fact the Cabinet Office press officer had got hold of Suffolk while he tended his flock in order to check that he was indeed contributing to online discussions of cloud computing.

For more on the CIO's sheep go here.®

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