The US federal government will soon adopt a “cloud-first” policy, meaning federal agencies will be required to used cloud services “whenever a secure, reliable, cost-effective cloud option exists.” The announcement came last week from Jeffrey Zients, the government’s first chief performance officer. According to the Washington Post, the new policy is part of a broader government initiative to “fix IT.”
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The Post quoted Zients saying: “Fixing IT is central to everything we’re trying to do across government. IT is our top priority.”
Zients also wants to:
- Give programs more flexibility in how they budget for IT projects
- Turn oversight panels into investment review boards
- Establish career paths for program managers
- Bring IT acquisition processes inline with the speed at which technology changes
In other words, he’s looking to make government IT projects more cost-effective and agile.
This change in government policy towards cloud computing follows Google suing the federal government for considering only Microsoft tools in purchase plans. Earlier this year Google acquired Federal Information Security Management Act certification, bringing the company’s Google Apps for Government service inline with the federal government’s information security requirements.
Image credit: Bichuas (E. Carton)
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