By CommsDay International

The US government will adopt cloud computing services as part of its efforts to transform its IT infrastructure. In a White House document released this week, plans were revealed that called for a revamp of the US Federal IT infrastructure with a focus on cloud computing platforms as a way to drive efficiency.

The revelation comes days after CommsDay reported on the Japanese government’s plan to build a massive private cloud, called the “Kasumigaseki Cloud,” to support the IT infrastructure of its ministries.

“Businesses facing market pressures from which the Government is more insulated are forced to innovate, adopting emerging technologies with agility, to achieve maximum efficiency. Where appropriate, the Government needs to adopt innovations with the same agility,” the White House document said. “The Federal technology environment requires a fundamental re-examination of investments in technology infrastructure.”

As part of the administration’s Infrastructure Modernization Program, pilot projects are planned to identify common services and solutions with an emphasis on the use of cloud computing and a goal of “significant savings, achieved through basic changes in future Federal information infrastructure investment strategies and elimination of duplicative operations at the agency level.”

“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,” the document stated.

Pilots that will be deployed on cloud computing platforms include: end-user communications and computing; secure virtualized data centres, portals, collaboration and messaging; content, information and records management; workflow and case management; data analytics, visualization and reporting; and enterprise Software as a Service such as financial management.

The document does however highlight the challenges of going to a cloud computing architecture when compared to dedicated agency data centres, such as security and the need for new service delivery and applications management models.

“Risks associated with the implementation of a new technology service delivery model include policy changes, implementation of dynamic applications, and securing the dynamic environment,” the document said. “The mitigation plan for these risks depends on establishing a proactive program management office to implement industry best practices and government policies in the management of any program. In addition, the Federal community will need to actively put in place new security measures which will allow dynamic application use and information-sharing to be implemented in a secure fashion.”

The benefit of cloud computing are noted as “outyear savings” against the initial investment of adopting the technology.

“Expected savings in the outyears, as more agencies reduce their costs of hosting systems in their own data centres, should be many times the original investment in this area,” the document said, adding that initial pilots will serve as test beds to demonstrate capabilities, including appropriate security and privacy protection at or exceeding current best practices, developing standards, gathering data and benchmarking costs and performance.

As part of the IT transformation program, the document also outlined a new program called, “work-at-a-distance,” which aims to leverage new technologies to enable Federal employees to work in real time from remote locations. This not only reduces travel costs and energy consumption, but also improves the Government’s emergency preparedness capabilities, the document said.

Cloud-computing and “work-at-a-distance” represent major new Government-wide initiatives, supported by the CIO Council under the auspices of the Federal CIO (OMB’s E-Government Administrator), and funded through the General Services Administration (GSA) as the service-provider.

This article was first published in CommsDay International