Aneesh Chopra Nominated For Federal CTO

Mr. Jeffrey Kaplan Talks About The Cloud Channel

By G C Network | October 6, 2011

This afternoon I had a very interesting discussion with Mr. Jeffrey Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrategies and founder of the Cloud Computing Showplace. His firm is focused entirely on the…

The Economic Benefit of Cloud Computing

By G C Network | October 2, 2011

(The following is the Executive Summary of a recent NJVC Executive Whitepaper. The full version is available at NJVC.com ) Cloud computing, as defined by the National Institute of Standards…

Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies: Part 4 – Cloud Computing for Defense and Intelligence

By G C Network | September 15, 2011

(This is part 4 of the series entitled “Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies”. First published on Forbes.com, this series provides the content of a whitepaper I recently…

Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies : Part 3 – Cloud Transition Lessons Learned

By G C Network | September 13, 2011

(This is part 3 of the series entitled “Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies”. First published on Forbes.com, this series provides the content of a whitepaper I recently…

Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies : Part 2 – Challenges of Cloud Computing

By G C Network | September 9, 2011

(This is part 2 of the series entitled “Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies” that first appeared on Forbes.com. This series provides the content of a whitepaper I…

Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies : Part 1-Introduction

By G C Network | September 8, 2011

(This post first appeared on “Cloud Musings on Forbes”. This series provides the content of a whitepaper I recently authored. A copy of the complete whitepaper is available at NJVC.com…

FedPlatform.org Focuses on a Government PaaS

By G C Network | August 26, 2011

   With GSA now issuing ATOs and Amazon launching it’s own government specific cloud, IaaS for government agencies is now a reality.  This next step in this “Cloud First” march…

On The Frontlines: GovCloud and Cybersecurity

By G C Network | July 28, 2011

My friends at Trezza Media recently published a couple of great online documents on GovCloud and Cyber. Your should especially check out the “Cloud Chopping Made Easy” by David McClure…

GovCloud Is Now For Real !!

By G C Network | July 3, 2011

On Friday July 1, Infrastructure-as-a-Services for the US federal government became a reality with Authority to Operate (ATO) approval for the following vendors: Web Hosting CGI Federal Computer Literacy World…

The Economic Impact of GovCloud

By G C Network | June 26, 2011

What a month! June has really been busy!! Just now getting around to doing a post about CloudExpo 2011 in New York.With over 5000 delegates in attendance, it was just…

Although Aneesh Chopra is a new name for most, he is well know in Virginia as Governor Tim Kaine’s Secretary of Technology. For the Commonwealth, he was charged with leading the state’s strategy to effectively leverage technology in government reform. If his strategy for the state can be used as an indicator for his plans in President Obama’s administration, you should take a look at Virginia’s Strategic Plan for Information Technology.

One of the state’s most successful recent innovations was the Virginia Information Technology Agency (VITA), the Commonwealth’s consolidated information technology organization. Not your typical government agency, VITA is actually a public-private partnership between Virginia and Northrop Grumman.

“The 10-year, $2 billion public-private partnership between VITA and Northrop Grumman is transforming state government’s IT infrastructure technology and providing the expertise and resources to support improved delivery of government services. Believed to be the first and the largest of its kind in the nation, the IT Infrastructure Partnership will deliver state-of-the-art technologies with significant resources for the benefit of citizens and consumers.

VITA and Northrop Grumman formed a public private partnership to provide the latest information technology services to Virginia state government. Northrop Grumman is responsible for the service delivery of the Commonwealth’s IT infrastructure needs, with oversight from VITA. It also provides the essential up-front private sector capital that otherwise would not be practically available to the Commonwealth. That capital enables the transformation of the IT environment and provides for ongoing refreshes to keep it in step with future technology advancements.

By July 2009, the partnership will transform the state’s IT infrastructure from more than 80 different agency systems to an enterprise-wide and a more cohesive, secure and efficient infrastructure.”

Mr. Chopra’s background with VITA seems to be a match for Vivek Kundra and the apparent vector towards Federal cloud computing. A VITA-like Federal agency may, in fact, be the perfect model for managing the coming government cloud.

This really is change!
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