AWS Public Sector Blog
Fast track your Cloud Center of Excellence in 5 steps: A guide for government agencies
With government agencies facing challenges with limited resources, expertise, and budget constraints, building a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) is key to accelerating cloud adoption, reducing organizational risk, and improving cloud governance with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Without a CCoE, agencies risk fragmented cloud adoption efforts, inconsistent security and compliance practices, and inefficient resource utilization and cost management.
A CCoE is a centralized, cross functional team in your organization that provides best practices and guidance for all cloud related initiatives including strategy, migration, and operations. The value of a CCoE comes from the alignment of information technology (IT) and cloud strategy with business execution. The key outcomes are to improve efficiency, optimize costs, enhance security, and drive innovation while minimizing risk. A CCoE will not require significant upfront investments and complete organizational restructuring. Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered assistants such as Amazon Q Business can fast track parts of the process, like the creation of a CCoE charter.
This post provides a five-step actionable approach that government agencies can follow to create an effective CCoE.
Step 1: Identify an executive sponsor for the CCoE
The executive sponsor for the CCoE in most government agencies is responsible for the overall IT strategy and digital transformation. Key considerations for the executive sponsor can include alignment with central agency IT teams or cross-agency coordination. The effectiveness of a CCoE depends on clear executive sponsorship to secure resources, align cloud initiatives with overall business strategy, and remove organizational obstacles.
Step 2: Raise awareness among internal stakeholders
Building awareness of the CCoE among stakeholders on both business and technology teams is critical. Stakeholders should have an understanding on the importance of a CCoE for driving outcomes in cloud governance, best practice, organizational alignment, and cost optimization. AWS provides resources like whitepapers and workshops to help with CCoE education and enablement, such as:
Step 3: Build a CCoE tiger team
It’s not necessary to restructure the organization to build a CCoE—instead a CCoE tiger team can be assembled. This can start with a small group of people—leveraging existing resources and iterating and scaling the tiger team as the cloud transformation accelerates. If necessary, people can cover multiple roles in the tiger team. The following table shows the foundational roles for a CCoE tiger team:
| Role | Description |
| CCoE leader | Responsible for working with the executive team on cross-team collaboration, next steps, sponsorship and overall management of the CCoE. |
| Lead cloud architect | Responsible for overall cloud technical architecture and establishes technical direction. |
| Cloud infrastructure engineer | Responsible for overall hybrid-cloud infrastructure architecture and works on engineering and continuous improvement of infrastructure stacks, templates, and other artifacts. |
| Cloud operations/security engineer | Responsible for identifying cloud platform operations and security requirements and compliance with risk management control objectives. |
| Finance manager | Responsible for tracking and analyzing cloud spend across all business units, developing cloud budget frameworks, and implementing cost control policies. |
Step 4: Create a CCoE charter using Amazon Q Business
A CCoE charter is a document that defines the executive summary, objectives, scope, team structure and roles, and success metrics. To create a draft CCoE charter, the following prompt can be used in Amazon Q Business after filling in the information required below:
Create a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) charter for a [type of government agency] with approximately [X employees/size] and the following context:
Key Information Required:
1. Mission Statement: [Brief description of agency's mission]
2. Current Cloud Maturity: [Basic/Intermediate/Advanced]
3. Main Cloud Challenges: [List top 3-4 challenges]
4. Compliance Requirements: [List key regulations]
5. Organization Type (select one):
* Centralized IT (single IT organization controlling all cloud resources)
* Decentralized (autonomous IT teams across departments)
* Federated with Communities of Practice (central governance with distributed execution teams)
Structure the charter with these sections:
1. Executive Summary
* Purpose and vision
* Strategic alignment with agency goals
* Expected benefits and outcomes
* Organizational model alignment
2. CCOE Objectives
* Primary goals
* Specific deliverables
* Timeline milestones
* Success criteria
3. Scope and Authority
* Areas of responsibility
* Decision-making authority
* Organizational positioning
* Cross-department coordination approach
* Governance boundaries
4. Team Structure and Roles
Core CCOE Roles (specify for each):
* CCOE leader/program manager
* Cloud architects
* Cloud security engineers
* Cloud operations engineers
* Financial analysts/finOps
* Training/enablement specialists
For each role, define:
* Primary responsibilities
* Required skills/certifications
* Time commitment (full-time/part-time)
* Reporting structure
Extended Team Members:
* Executive sponsor
* Business unit representatives
* Application teams
* Security/compliance teams
* Procurement/legal teams
Support Functions:
* Change management
* Communications
* Training
* Vendor management
RACI Matrix for Key Activities:
Create a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) matrix for:
1. Cloud strategy & governance
2. Architecture & standards
3. Security & compliance
4. Cost management & optimization
5. Training & enablement
6. Operations & support
7. Innovation & best practices
8. Operating model
* Governance framework
* Meeting cadence
* Decision-making process
* Escalation paths
* Inter-department collaboration framework
* Resource sharing model
* Communities of practice structure (if applicable)
5. Success Metrics
* Key performance indicators
* Department-specific metrics (if applicable)
* Compliance tracking
Charter should align with:
* Government security and compliance requirements
* Public sector procurement processes
* Budget cycles and constraints
* Cross-agency collaboration needs
The information generated can be used as the first draft of the CCoE charter.
Step 5: Launch a pilot initiative
Identify a pilot initiative that is simple but a priority for the executive sponsor. This could be optimizing costs through rightsizing resources or implementing cost monitoring tools, improving efficiency through automation or re-architecture, or strengthening security. Document the lessons learned and share best practices. Communicate regularly with stakeholders and leaders and show value through KPIs and success metrics. After launching the pilot initiative, build a roadmap of initiatives that can be prioritized and scaled as your cloud adoption and transformation progresses.
Conclusion
By taking these five steps to build a CCoE, government agencies can maximize the benefits of the AWS Cloud by aligning IT and cloud strategy with business execution. For agencies that are resource constrained, let Amazon Q Business help reduce some of the effort required when it comes to creating a CCoE charter. For more information on how to get started with a CCoE, please reach out to the AWS Public Sector team.