Scotland's Digital Future: Report on the current landscape for Data Hosting and Data Centres in the Scottish Public Sector

Annex E - Possible Guidance

• develop toolkits to support guidance/strategy on best practice to help organisations make choices e.g.
• audit existing data centre/hosting facilities
• standardised cost model that will allow organisations to compare their current delivery model to the alternatives.
• identify the skills both internal and external to run hosting services to their optimum efficiency
• energy efficiency standards
• pros and cons of the various hosting options.
• use of existing and emerging procurement frameworks e.g. SWAN, g-cloud
• guidance on what a public sector data centre standard should be
• create guidance/strategy on best practice
• reuse of existing facilities that have through the toolkits demonstrated they meet standards
• consolidation plans at sectoral level building to a national roadmap/plan
• energy targets for public sector hosting facilities.
• identify case studies on local/national/international approaches that show best practice and lessons learned
• sectoral led governance advocating mandatory returns based on key metrics from the measurement and benefits framework.
• National reporting and monitoring
• policy on cloud usage for the public sector.
• develop a procurement framework - We will work with sectors to understand the services they would be interested in using and engage with procurement colleagues to provide this.