Government creates inter-agency roadmap for cloud computing adoption

Thursday, November 03, 2011 5:28:22 PM

Since former and first federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra initiated the Cloud First Policy in 2009, many agencies in the U.S. government have begun to ramp up their rates of cloud adoption. InformationWeek recently reported that several agencies just completed a new roadmap to increase the speed at which federal offices are capable of adopting cloud computing.

According to the source, the National Institute for Standards and Technology, the Office of Management and Budget and the Federal Cloud Computing Standards and Technology Working Group worked together to create what they feel is a comprehensive and defining set of guidelines pertaining to federal cloud adoption.

"Our goal is to make it substantially easier to buy, sell, interconnect and use cloud environments in the government," Pat Gallagher, direct of the NIST, said in a speech, according to the news provider. "The roadmap will serve as our action plan, and we expect it not only to drive federal standards efforts, but because our needs are not unique in government, we think it will help the private sector as well."

Recent public statements from other public officials have improved the accountability of the new technology. Steve VanRoekel, the new federal CIO, recently expressed a commitment to perpetuate and further the work and goals of his predecessor.

-McAfee Cloud Security