The Canadian government’s per-capita spending on cloud computing is one-third that of the U.S. government, Deloitte has found, a slowness the consulting firm argued is holding back service improvements and efficiencies. (The Logic)

Talking point: The Treasury Board, which supervises back-office functions for the federal government, encourages cloud solutions, but Deloitte found numerous structural obstacles. Contracting out computing reduces capital costs but increases operating expenses, for example, which federal budget practices don’t handle well. The government also has trouble satisfying security requirements, competing with the private sector for people with the needed skills and overcoming barriers between staffing groups built to administer technology in-house. The federal auditor general also found a lack of practical support for cloud adoption in a separate report last month.