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Cloud in the government sector of India is still in the nascent stage; the rate of government cloud adoption (hereafter GCA) has not been that encouraging, as was envisaged. This slow growth is evident from the several global cloud and UN ICT indices. There is no doubt that the cloud is a brilliant technology and a plethora of literature has been written about the cloud that how it will revolutionize the IT industry. But the cloud adoption critical factors are unique for different organizations and the broad spectrum factors cannot be suitable to any specific organization, particularly for the government. There are several reasons attributed to the slow GCA in India which is discussed in the paper. The cloud status in India is exhibited in Table 1.
Table 1. | Indicators | Status | References |
| Global cloud computing scorecard | 20th rank out of 24 countries | BSA cloud computing scorecard, (2018) |
| Cloud readiness index | 10th rank out of 14 countries |
Asia cloud computing association, (2020)
|
| Cloud adoption status | Adoption rate 6%; lagging behind the global average of 7.9% | NASSCOM, (2019) |
| ICT index | 134 rank, out of a total of 175 countries | ITU, (2017) |
There is an utmost need for the study in this research area because the government sector is research deficient, complex institutions, lack of information, one of the biggest spenders on technology, less cloud market exposure, limited competition, internal structure and processes, bureaucratic setup, legal and administrative constraints, a lesser decision taken autonomy, budgetary issues, fewer workforce resources, and greater responsibility (Yikai et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2016). Adopting cloud technology in India is a challenging task owing to the vastness of the country in terms of population size and a large number of government departments in the country (UN, 2020; Sectors, 2018).
This original work is one of the pioneer studies for GCA in India, and no such study/limited study has been done. Most of the studies found by exhaustive literature review were conducted for MSME, private industry, hospitals, education sector, etc. Some of the unique factors which are specific to the government organizations only, like procurement, awareness, organization administration, and legal issues, were identified and are incorporated into the study. The paper aims to study the key factors influencing GCA and examine the effect of the categorical moderating variable on the model constructs.
The organization types and adoption stages are considered as the moderating variables for the GCA. The government sector comprises four types of organizations in India Central, State, Local Bodies, and Public sector undertaking (Law commission, 1988; Goel, 2015), which is considered the moderating variable and its role has been analyzed on GCA. The adoption stages comprise of three stages- adopted, currently evaluating, and plans to adopt.