Digital Discourse / Archives for Mike Hettinger

This week in the Federal Cloud: May 13-18

May 18, 2012 By

There was big news in cloud this week with the announcement by GSA on May 14th of the first certified 3rd Party Assessment Organizations (3PAOs). The initial 3PAOs include a federal agency (DOT Enterprise Service Center), SRA International, and a number of small to mid-size companies specializing in FISMA certification. The 3PAOs are an integral part of the FedRAMP process so this action represents a major step forward for the FedRAMP program and vendors wishing to go through the FedRAMP process can now hire one of these approved 3PAOs to assess the security of their system. The link below will take you to GSA’s list of accredited 3PAOs.

Also this week, we began to get some clarity around the role of industry in the shared services initiative, with public comments from OMB Officials about how the strategy will be implemented and what role industry and government shared service providers will play in the initiative. According to OMB, they are not distinguishing public and private sector service providers. Read more from Federal News Radio.

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG.

Share|
Filed Under: Government, Policy, Policy - Cloud Computing, PSIG, Software Tagged With: , ,

Lorraine Landfried, Deputy CIO for Product Development at VA to speak to SIIA Public Sector Group

May 16, 2012 By

Lorraine Landfried

As part of its ongoing Executive Roundtable Series, SIIA will host Lorraine Landfried, Deputy CIO for Product Development at the Department of Veterans Affairs for a roundtable discussion on the latest developments around IT enhancement and strategy within VA.

In her role at VA, Landfried facilitates all IT development activities, including planning and oversight of the IT projects supporting the Secretary’s 16 major initiatives.

The roundtable will be the first executive discussion before SIIA’s new Public Sector Innovation Group, a newly created division of SIIA comprised of innovative software and IT services firms seeking to take advantage of the evolving Federal investment in Cloud-related technologies.

The event is open to all SIIA members and invited guests. Please contact Mike Hettinger for more information.

Event details:
What: SIIA Public Sector Innovation Group Executive Roundtable
When: May 24, 2012, 11:00am
Where: SIIA Offices, 1090 Vermont Avenue, Suite 600, Washington, DC

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG.

Share|
Filed Under: Government, Policy, Policy - Cloud Computing, PSIG, Software Tagged With: , ,

SIIA Submits Testimony to Congressional Forum on Information Technology

May 15, 2012 By

Last Friday, Representatives Elijah Cummings (MD) and Gerry Connelly (VA) hosted a Congressional Forum on Information Technology at the Fairfax County, Virginia Government Center to review government’s efforts to leverage innovative technology to reduce cost and improve citizen services. The forum featured testimony from Federal CIO Steven Van Roekel, as well as industry representatives including SIIA Public Sector Innovation Group Board Member, David Mihalchik of Google. SIIA was pleased to have been asked by the Members to provide testimony for the record.

SIIA’s testimony focused on the important transformative benefits of cloud computing – economic growth, choice and lower cost — and encouraged Congress to consider these when looking at cloud computing. We also highlighted the key security benefits that can be realized by implementing cloud computing, discussed the importance of the 25 Point Plan to Reform Federal IT, and explored the inter-relationship between Cloud First, FedRAMP, the Shared Services Strategy and the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative.
Overall, the interaction between Reps. Cummings and Connelly and the forum witnesses was thoughtful and successfully highlighted the issues of importance to government and industry alike as the federal government moves ahead with cloud computing. It was particularly encouraging to see these key members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee engage on an issue of such great importance to SIIA members and the federal IT industry as a whole and we applaud them for their effort.

Read the full text of SIIA’s statement.

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG.

Share|
Filed Under: Cloud Computing, Government, Policy, Policy - Cloud Computing, PSIG, Software Tagged With: , ,

This week in the Federal Cloud: April 30-May 4

May 4, 2012 By

There were a couple of expected but relatively big announcements around cloud in the federal government this week. First and foremost was the issuance of the Federal IT Shared Services Strategy on May 2nd by Federal CIO, Steve VanRoekel. The Shared Services Strategy, like the Shared-First Initiative before it, seeks to reduce the overall cost of government by eliminating duplicative IT and streamlining operations, while moving agencies to shared platforms for commodity IT (like email and storage), support IT (HR and financial management) and eventually mission IT (performance management). Under the plan, agencies have until August 31 to create their shared services roadmaps.

Also this week, we heard the first definitive date for the launching of the FedRAMP Initial Operational Capabilities (IOC), as it was publically announced that June 6th would be the date. This means, according to the FedRAMP timeline that we will see an operational program, with limited scope. We should also expect to see progress toward the official authorization/certification of CSPs, an updated Concept of Operations, and updated continuous monitoring guidance. It also means we will have to have approved third party assessors (3PAOs) in the very near term as they play an integral part in certifying CSPs. It was originally expected that we would have approved 3PAOs in April, but that date was later pushed to early May.

In other cloud news:

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG.

Share|
Filed Under: Cloud Computing, Government, Policy, Policy - Cloud Computing, PSIG, Software Tagged With: ,

This Week in the Federal Cloud: April 23-27

April 27, 2012 By

Probably the biggest cloud event this week was the Salesforce.com Cloud Force event held on Wednesday at the DC Convention Center. The more than 1000 attendees were treated to a keynote presentation by former Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra. The event focused heavily on the use of social media in the corporate world but also featured the announcement of the launching of Salesforce’s government cloud.

This week also featured the launching of the Cloud Computing Exchange by Meritalk. The Cloud Computing Exchange, like Meritalk’s other “exchanges” is designed to foster discussion and the sharing of best practices among government and industry. The first quarterly meeting of the exchange featured a keynote by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) highlighting their recent transition to Google Apps for Government to manage their email system. The Meritalk Cloud Computing Exchange was followed by a Capitol Hill Brainstorming Session with keynotes from Senators Tom Carper (DE) and Scott Brown (MA) as well as panels of government and industry cloud leaders, including SIIA Members Google and IBM.

In other cloud news:

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG.

Share|
Filed Under: Cloud Computing, Government, Policy, Policy - Cloud Computing, PSIG, Software Tagged With: ,

This Week in the Federal Cloud: April 16-20

April 20, 2012 By

This week, DOD and Intelligence officials speaking at the AFCEA conference highlighted the need to match acquisition policy with the speed of technology. As we have seen over many years, governments consistently struggle to change their culture and mindset, as well as the underlying acquisition policy, to keep pace with changing technology. As governments plan for and begin to move to cloud computing, this issue will continue to be a point of debate.

This week we also saw the release of an insightful survey by Serena Software, highlighting the views of federal IT officials on a number of key topics. Agile development – a software development process focused on delivering results quickly in small increments – was a priority for only 22 percent of the 225 federal IT professionals surveyed. The same study also reported that only 19 percent of those surveyed listed cloud computing as a priority despite the push by the Administration for “Cloud First.”

The drumbeat around continuous monitoring also continued this week, as lawmakers began debate on Rep. Issa’s FISMA 2.0 legislation. The bill, H.R. 4257, known officially as the Federal Information Security Amendments Act of 2012 passed the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee earlier this week by voice vote and is expected to be considered on the House Floor next week. The key to continuous monitoring, which is seen by many as an alternative to compliance audits, is making sure the underlying control environment you are monitoring is secure. Simply monitoring a weak system won’t achieve the desired results.

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG.

Share|
Filed Under: Cloud Computing, Cloud/Gov, Government, Policy, Policy - Cloud Computing, PSIG, Software Tagged With: ,

This Week in the Federal Cloud: April 9-13

April 13, 2012 By

The run up to FedRAMP continued this week, with an announcement on Friday morning by Dave McClure, GSA Associate Administrator for the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technology, that the first FedRAMP 3PAOs would be announced in May.  This represents a slight delay from what we had been hearing over the past few months, namely that the initial accredited 3PAOs would be ready to go by mid-April.  As anyone who has been following the FedRAMP process knows, without the first set of accredited 3PAOs it’s difficult to get the process of provisional authorization for CSPs under FedRAMP going.

Also this week, SIIA member McAfee hosted an exciting and insightful Public Sector Summit this week at the Ritz Carlton in Pentagon City.  The event attended by more than 300 government and industry participates had a heavy focus on cybersecurity, cloud and mobility and featured keynotes from Howard Schmidt, the White House Cybersecurity Advisory and General Steven Smith, Director of the Army Cyberspace Task Force.

In other cloud news:

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group at SIIA.

Share|
Filed Under: Cloud Computing, Government, Policy, Policy - Cloud Computing, PSIG, Software Tagged With: ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »