"There's a push to put the records in the cloud," says Panama City network administrator Richard Ferrick. Using Google Docs frees the municipal government of Panama City from having to buy additional file servers, while having back-up outside of Florida's stormy climate was seen as a plus. But there were also concerns there would be a lot less visibility and control over documents turned over to the Google cloud.

The city already had experience migrating about 250 employees to Google Apps for e-mail and archiving in 2008 and more recently decided to go further to move its records into Google's cloud, too. Panama City found a way to exert the controls and management it wanted for this step by making use of Aprigo CloudLock for Google Apps, which is a Google marketplace application built on the Google Apps engine.

TECH DEBATE:

Aprigo's cloud-based security service is a tool for Google Apps that lets administrators place access controls over their documents by specific user or groups, deciding who is allowed to share what with whom. The service allows for choosing data owners or auditor rights and delegating controls. It can enforce policies around who can copy local files to Google Docs, and who has edit permissions. It offers a way to do data inventory, and keep track of which documents are shared outside the organization on a more public basis, says Ferrick, adding he didn't spot other choices to this kind of functionality.