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Cloud Computing: Feds Push Hard for Cloud Solutions
Despite Federal CIO Vivek Kundra own warning that “agencies should make risk-based decisions which carefully consider the readiness of commercial or government providers to fulfill their Federal needs,” the new federal budget is pushing hard to adopt cloud solutions where ever possible to reduce costs. The new US federal budget allocates $20 billion for a federal cloud computing initiative in FY 2012, that’s 25 percent of the total proposed federal IT budget. A study authored by Kundra, the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy, estimates that the government could save as much as 30 percent over current infrastructure expenditures if IT services were moved to the cloud.
Kundra coined the name for the new Cloud Computing strategy at the federal government as “Cloud First“. Kundra wrote: “To harness the benefits of cloud computing, we have instituted a Cloud First policy. This policy is intended to accelerate the pace at which the government will realize the value of cloud computing by requiring agencies to evaluate safe, secure cloud computing options before making any new investments.”
When President Barack Obama introduced the FY 2012 budget, he again emphasized that cloud computing is one direction that the federal government is pursuing. Obama said that “by consolidating data centers and leveraging cloud computing the Federal Government will reduce the Nation’s data center footprint, strengthen security, and yield savings in the form of real estate, energy, equipment, and maintenance costs that can then be redirected toward the projects with the greatest benefit to the American taxpayer.”
Kundra wrote that before the government could adopt any cloud solution that the following considerations need to be carefully weighed to assess the risk of any such move:
- Compliance with laws, regulations and agency requirements
- Sensitivity of the data which is to be stored in the cloud solution
- Steps that will be taken to assure privacy and confidentiality of information
- Data controls and access policies
- Integrity to ensure that data is authorized, complete and accurate
- Security of access to the physical location where servers will be maintained
- Governance to ensure that cloud providers are transparent in their operations so that their security and management controls can be assessed and monitored
