Cloud Governance Impact Report – Public Administration 2025

Approved in 2020, the Cloud Strategy for Public Administration reinforced the role of cloud computing in modernising the public sector based on the principles of security, efficiency and interoperability. Five years later, significant changes have occurred in the European technological, regulatory and geopolitical landscape, creating new challenges driven by a strengthened EU cybersecurity framework and the need to ensure the operational continuity of critical public services.

 

This report assesses the impact of cloud governance on Portuguese public administration in 2025, based on a national survey conducted between December 2025 and February 2026. It continues the monitoring cycle initiated by the Cloud Governance Impact Assessment Report (2024), where data comparability allows. It should be noted that the substantial increase in the number of participating organisations in 2025 introduces greater institutional diversity. Therefore, comparisons between reporting periods should be interpreted with caution.

 

To facilitate comparative analysis and reflect the diversity of the surveyed organisations, respondents were categorised into Groups 1, 2 and 3, capturing differences in organisational size, operational criticality and technological capability. The sample is balanced across the institutional groups: 29% of organisations are classified as Group 1, 36% as Group 2 and 35% as Group 3.

 

The findings show that cloud computing has evolved from an emerging technology into a core component of the public sector's digital ecosystem.

• Seventy-seven per cent of responding organisations report using cloud services.
• Overall investment has increased significantly, with the average investment per organisation rising from around €55.7 thousand to approximately €136.6 thousand.
• Adoption of the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model has grown substantially, rising from 11% in 2020 to 38% in 2025, reflecting greater infrastructure maturity.
• Despite this progress, 163 of the responding organisations reported that they had not launched any artificial intelligence (AI) projects during the previous year. This situation is particularly common among organisations with lower levels of technological maturity and more limited in-house technical capabilities.

 

The analysis confirms significant progress in cloud adoption across the public sector, while also highlighting structural disparities between institutional groups and ongoing challenges related to public procurement, financial predictability, technical capacity and the integration of legacy systems.

 

This document is available in Portuguese only.