Oracle and Salesforce to integrate clouds: Oracle and Salesforce announced on June 25 that they have signed a comprehensive nine-year partnership to integrate clouds. The deal encompasses all three tiers of cloud computing — Applications, Platform and Infrastructure. Under the agreement Salesforce will standardize on the Oracle Linux operating system, the Oracle Database, and Java Middleware Platform and Oracle plans to integrate Salesforce.com with Oracle’s Fusion HCM and Financial Cloud. The move is the latest in a series of big announcements by Oracle including their recent announcement that they would be moving from NASDAQ to the NYSE. Read more here.
Senate seeks changes to DOD OCIO: According to a report in Fierce Government IT, the Senate Armed Services Committee has proposed rolling the duties on the DOD CIO into the portfolio of the Department’s Chief Management Officer and then elevating the CMO to the level of Undersecretary of Defense. In the report accompanying S. 1197, the committee states that it believes this move will strengthen the office of CIO.
GAO out with report on GPRA Modernization Act: GAO released a report this week highlighting the progress made and challenges that remain for the federal government as it tries to integrate performance management into its culture. While GAO sees some progress in developing and implementing agency performance goals and cross-agency priority goals, they believe the executive branch needs to do more to fully implement and leverage the act’s provisions to address governance challenges. See the full report.
GSA grants federal agency FedRAMP approval: GSA announced this week that the National Information Technology Center (NITC) at USDA has received authority to operate from GSA for its Infrastructure as a Service ( IaaS) offering. This approval, the second agency CSP approval and the first for a federal agency CSP, will now be placed in the FedRAMP repository available for agencies to leverage. According to the release, USDA’s NITC worked with 3PAO COACT and internal USDA audit teams to complete the FedRAMP requirements to achieve an agency ATO. This authorization used the FedRAMP baseline controls, the FedRAMP templates, and was granted an ATO by the USDA Associate CIO. For more on FedRAMP, click here.
NASA taps Johnson Space Center CIO for headquarters job: NASA announced this week that Larry Sweet, who has been at Houston’s Johnson Space Center for 26 years will be replacing former NASA CIO, Linda Cureton who left the agency earlier this year. Federal News Radio has the story.
Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG. Sign up for the Public Sector Innovation Roundup email newsletter for weekly updates.