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AFCEA: Cyberspace at the Cross Roads
Starting December 2, 2009, the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) will be putting on a two-day cyberspace conference. Titled “Cyberspace at the Cross Roads: The Intersection of Cyber,…
“Cloud” Shows Promise during Navy Trident Warrior
Last month as part of the Navy’s annual Trident Warrior exercise, Dataline, LLC successfully demonstrated that a standard shipboard communications infrastructure could be used to manage a commercial cloud infrastructure-as-a-service…
Government Cloud Computing Value Survey
As part of a continuing Government Cloud computing education program, Dataline, LLC has released a Government Cloud Computing Value Survey. This online resource has been designed as an aid to…
“Hyper-Standardized” Cloud Computing Environment a Plus for DISA
Henry Sienkiewcz, DISA Computer Services Technical Director, credits the cloud computing “hyper-standardized” environment for the improvement they have been able to deliver through their cloud computing initiative. During remarks at…
Army Deputy CIO Cites Army/DISA Cloud Computing Partnership
This week’s Federal Executive Forum taping highlighted collaboration between DISA and the Army on the service’s transition to cloud computing. Army Deputy Chief Information Officer Mike Krieger called it a…
Navy CIO Discusses Cloud Computing
During this week’s Federal Executive Forum taping, Navy CIO Robert Carey discussed his views on cloud computing. Stating that the NGEN and CANES (Navy Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services)…
DoD, DHS and FBI Highlight Identity Management Interoperability
During this week’s Federal Executive Forum, key decision makers from DoD, DHS and FBI highlighted identity management interoperability as their key priority for 2010. Panelist included: Robert Mocny, Acting Director,…
EuroCloud Launches !!
Congratulations to Pierre-Jose Billotte for the successful launch of EuroCloud !! Established as a pan European network, EuroCloud are communities that represent a knowledgeable network of companies engaged local and…
Government Cloud Economics
In the The Economics of Cloud Computing, Gwen Morton and Ted Alford have published an EXCELLENT economic evaluation of the federal government’s push to cloud computing. Anyone interested in this…
Deputy CIA CIO Newest Ulitzer Author
Jill Tummler Singer, Deputy Chief Information Officer at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is now a Ulitzer author. Appointed in November 2006, Ms Singer is responsible for ensuring CIA has…
A couple of weeks ago, I was offered a chance to meet Mr. Vivek Kundra at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in downtown Washington, DC. Needless to say, I was honored to be given the opportunity. Although I was clear on my own views of how the Federal government could use cloud computing, the Obama administration’s plans were, at that time, anything but certain. What a difference a week makes !!
As has been widely reported, the President’s 2010 Budget submission has firmly set cloud computing as a “key tool for improving innovation, efficiency and effectiveness in Federal IT. The GSA has emphasized this edict by releasing a request for information (RFI) for Infrastructure as a Service offerings. This rapid and fairly decisive course change to the way Federal IT will be procured in the future can potentially change an entire industry. Looking at what has happened in the financial and automotive industries, this could also be seen as the administration flexing its muscle yet again in order to set the direction of a crucial component of the US economic system.
So now, with a little over a week before my meeting with Mr. Kundra, what do I talk about? Since the administrations direction has now been set, there’s clearly no need to discuss cloud computing as the right direction for Federal IT. Not being a political pundit or economic advisor, I will definitely stay away from the debates around government influence over the commercial sector. So as a technologist, I will stick to my knitting and discuss what technologies the coming GovCloud implementation will be able to leverage going forward.
If you have any suggestions for me, I would be happy to hear about them. The only thing I ask is for your recommendations to be focused on general technologies, industry standards or open source approaches. Please, no specific commercial products or specific technology implementations.
Of particular interest to me will be those technologies, standards or approaches that are “shovel ready”, and available for pilot implementations today! As outlined in the budget, “… pilot projects will be implemented to offer an opportunity to utilize more fully and broadly departmental and agency architectures to identify enterprise-wide common services and solutions, with a new emphasis on cloud-computing. The pilots will test a variety of services and delivery modes, provisioning approaches, options, and opportunities that cloud computing brings to Federal Government. Additionally, the multiple approaches will focus on measuring service, cost, and performance; refining and scaling pilots to full capabilities; and providing financial support to accelerate migration”.
I look forward to your assistance on this!
Kevin Jackson
[email protected]
3 Comments
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Kevin – good luck with the meeting. I like your idea of crowd-sourcing suggestions for the meeting! Others will likely have more valuable ideas than mine, so let me just suggest a little thing I’d like Vivek to keep in mind as a guiding principle for open government: Choice.
What do I mean? Government agencies, as they modernize to approach the agility and performance of great commercial IT shops, will be looking to cloud-solution (and other) providers for “business value and choice in a mixed-source world,” in the words of Microsoft’s Teresa Carlson. The agency CIOs and CTOs whom Vivek leads need the flexibility to choose the best tools to accomplish their mission regardless of platform. I’d hate to see a “one-size-fits-all” prescribed solution (even if it were based on Microsoft products!), and I think we’ll all benefit from a balanced approach with appropriate choice and flexibility reserved for smart CIOs.
Good luck and I’m looking forward to reading your report of the meeting! -lewis
Thank you very much for your comments. I agree with your thoughts and personally think that cloud portability will be a huge challenge.
Kevin, that is an awesome opportunity to be able to be part of shaping the future of IT for our Govt. This obviously comes with some great responsibility as well.
I think in order for the govt to adopt such a broad technology there needs to be standards set for interoperability and security first. We all know that standards boards tend to lag behind real world implementations. But in this case the consequences of not going forward with agreed upon security and interop standards is very dangerous.
What has worked with other technologies is lighting a torch underneath the vendors to get together and provide a set of standards before any govt contracts are let. Sometimes providing that carrot (big carrot) is essential to get everyone in the same room. Good luck with your meeting, very cool!