Is the Swiss government bringing the Chinese into the country? Or so at least describes the online medium specialized in IT news Inside channels a recently publicized decision by the Swiss Federal Chancellery: the Confederation will in future outsource state data to five foreign cloud providers – including the Chinese company Alibaba. The financial framework for the entire contract amounts to 110 million francs (around 100 million euros), spread over five years.
Cloud services are becoming more and more important – for private individuals, companies, but also for government agencies. Put simply, cloud computing is the outsourcing of data and data processing to an external IT infrastructure, provided by a corresponding company. Well-known providers in the private sector are, for example, Dropbox or Google Drive. The cost argument in particular speaks in favor of going to the cloud: You save on hardware and software costs and pay for computing and storage capacity as required.
But outsourcing state data to large foreign corporations also carries risks, which is why the large order to four US companies and a Chinese group in Switzerland has met with criticism. Secret services in the USA and China are notorious for their hunger for data, writes the NZZ. The Day indicator commentedthat Switzerland is making itself an assistant to Chinese industrial policy through its assignment to Alibaba.
In fact, both US corporations – IBM, Amazon, Oracle and Microsoft – and Alibaba are considered problematic partners in terms of cloud services, even if they clearly dominate the market. In fact, the Chinese state can access the data of its companies relatively easily. And in the USA, a law called the Cloud Act ensures that data stored by US companies is not secure from access by American authorities.
The “very attractive prices” were probably the decisive factor
Why did the five companies still prevail? The publicly available notification of the award of the contract provides information: Firstly, one of the conditions for the applicants was that they have data centers on at least three continents and that their services must be made available to an international clientele. And secondly, among the award criteria, the factors quality and price had the greatest weight. According to the report, Alibaba in particular was awarded the contract primarily because of the “very attractive prices”. Accordingly, smaller providers from Switzerland or Europe had little chance in this tender.
The award to Alibaba in particular is astonishing among experts. Jens Klessmann, head of the Digital Public Services division at the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems, considers the Swiss decision to be remarkable and, from a German point of view, “something new”. However, he also describes the US providers as difficult when it comes to data protection according to the local understanding. Another point: “When it comes to cloud computing, you really have to talk about the management of dependencies,” says the expert. Against this background, it is at least an advantage for Switzerland to have given the contract to five providers from two countries.
How secure Swiss data is ultimately from these providers depends on the type of data and its form, says Jens Klessmann. “For example, you can pass on data to Alibaba that are already public. And more sensitive information can be encrypted in advance.”
After all, the Swiss federal administration adopted its cloud strategy last December released. Among other things, it says that “in a first step” only information that is not classified as “confidential” or “secret” should end up in the cloud. But: “Based on experience and further legal clarifications, the recommendation will be adapted in the future.” Basically, the strategy paper says, it is the responsibility of the Swiss federal ministries to decide where they want to use cloud services. They must make this decision “based on a risk assessment and examination of legal conformity”.