Government in the Cloud

“Cash for Clunkers” Should Have Used the Cloud!

By G C Network | August 24, 2009

Rich Bruklis wrote an excellent essy on how the government missed a perfect opportunity to use cloud computing. In “Cloud Opportunity Missed” he writes: “It appears that the voucher system…

US Navy Experiments With Secure Cloud Computing

By G C Network | August 20, 2009

This week in San Diego, CA the US Navy held the initial planning conference for Trident Warrior ’10. The Trident Warrior series is the premier annual FORCEnet Sea Trial Event…

GSA To Present On Cloud Initiative at NCOIC Plenary

By G C Network | August 13, 2009

A General Services Administration (GSA) representative is now scheduled to provide a briefing on the agency’s cloud computing initiative during a “Best Practices for Cloud Initiatives using Storefronts” session on…

FAA CIO Focuses on Cybersecurity

By G C Network | August 12, 2009

During this week Federal Executive Forum, FAA CIO Dave Bowen mentioned protection against software vulnerabilities, wireless intrusion and website vulnerabilities as his top cybersecurity priorities. As the Assistant Administrator for…

DHS Asst. Secretary Addresses Cybersecurity Priorities

By G C Network | August 11, 2009

Greg Schaffer, Assistant Secretary for CyberSecurity & Communications for the US Department of Homeland Security, sees Trusted Internet Connections, EINSTEIN, and front line defense of the nation’s networks as top…

US DoD Chief Security Officer on Cybersecurity Priorities

By G C Network | August 10, 2009

In a Federal Executive Forum interview, Robert Lentz, Chief Security Officer for the US Department of Defense, highlighted the departments cybersecurity priorities. Mr. Lentz is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of…

Twitter Under Denial of Service Attack

By G C Network | August 6, 2009

Multiple sources are reporting that Twitter continues to be under a denial of service attack. Some are speculating that this represents the power of a coordinated bot network attack. For…

NCOIC Holding Full Day Cloud Computing Session

By G C Network | August 5, 2009

The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) will be holding a one-day cloud computing session during its plenary meetings, 21-25 September at the Fair Lakes Hyatt in Fairfax, VA. A…

Sevatec a New Player in the Federal Cloud Computing Market

By G C Network | August 3, 2009

Just in time for the new Federal Cloud Computing Storefront, Sevatec, Inc. is announcing the development of a toolkit to help federal agencies transform their enterprise architectures to cloud computing…

GSA Releases Cloud Computing RFQ

By G C Network | July 31, 2009

Following through on a much anticipated action, GSA released their Cloud Computing Request For Quotation (RFQ) today. Cloud computing is a major part of President Obama’s reform effort and this…

Back in mid-September, there was quite a thread in the Google Cloud Computing Group on the use of cloud computing by the federal government.  Some of the interesting comments were:
“Not an actual use case yet, but I see that electronic voting (e.g. US presidential elections) would be a good use case for cloud computing, given technology allows eliminate electoral fraud and provides reliable audit trail. “
(NOTE: Throughout the thread, many participants disgreed with this as a good use case)
“Another use case in my mind would be optimization of USPS, that might be beneficial for both government, businesses and cloud providers, but I’ll leave it here, until I’m ready with specifics.” 
“As the first U.S. E-Govt Administrator, I am very intrigued by applications of Cloud Computing to government.  The best use case for this would be electronic filings, especially quarterly Tax payments and annual Tax returns.  However, business gateways and citizen service portals that cut across levels of government would also be good. “
“Another one would be turbotax etc.” 
“At CNIPA (the Italian eGovernment-supporting technical body) we are just organizing a series of seminars on cloud computing with industry and consultancies. My understanding is that electronic voting will not be a viable use case for a number of reasons which have little to do with the infrastructure or the paradigm that might be used. Much better eGovernment use case could be a “my government” portal, where people could exchange official communications with the administration, update their filings and perform payments after being digitally identified. A cloud infrastructure could be the best choice to experiment with a “zero-latency government”, where back-office interactions are not visible to citizens. There are a lot of things that should be analysed and piloted before, including legislative and privacy issues. The effort could be extremely rewarding, though.”
Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

G C Network