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SIIA Public Sector Innovation Group Announces Founding Board of Directors

May 24, 2012 By

SIIA today announced the founding members of the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) Board of Directors. PSIG is a newly formed division of SIIA dedicated to helping technology firms take advantage of the evolving federal investment in cloud-related technologies.

Newly appointed board members are executives from SIIA member companies and will add a critical voice to the ongoing debate on a host of key issues affecting the government IT industry, including cloud computing, FedRAMP, mobility, security, big data, procurement and innovation. The PSIG Board will help develop the Division’s initiatives and determine the projects, activities and events—which will include thought leadership around the implementation of cloud computing and an executive roundtable series with key decision-makers.

The Public Sector Innovation Group Board of Directors will be chaired by Doug Bourgeois, Vice President and Chief Cloud Executive at VMware, Inc.

All executives were appointed to serve one‐year terms.

Public Sector Innovation Group Board of Directors 2012:
• Mike Binko, President and CEO, kloudtrack
• Doug Bourgeois, VP & Chief Cloud Executive, VMware, Inc.
• Bart Epstein, SVP and GM, Military and Federal, Tutor.com
• Mark Forman, Founder, Government Transaction Services
• Tom Gann, Vice President, Government Relations, McAfee
• Gunnar Hellekson, Chief Technology Strategist, RedHat US Public Sector
• Joel Hinzman, Senior Director, Federal Affairs, Oracle
• Robert Hodges, Federal Business Development Lead, Bancroft Technology Group
• John Landwehr, VP Digital Government Solutions, Adobe
• David Lucas, Chief Strategy Officer, Global Computer Enterprises
• Preston McGee, Director of Business Development, Peniel Solutions LLC
• David Mihalchik, Business Development Executive – Federal, Google
• Michelle Rudnicki, VP, Cloud Computing IBM
• Jeff Ward, Vice President – Federal, Fiberlink

Laura Greenback is Communications Director at SIIA.

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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

SIIA Welcomes Aspen Insitute’s Cross Border Data Principles

April 24, 2012 By

Today the Aspen Institute released its first report on its IDEA project. It is a first-rate summary of Internet freedom issues and a call to action to implement principles designed to keep the Internet an open, vibrant platform for free expression and economic activity. In particular, the report endorses the cross-border data flow principles that SIIA has been supporting:

Free Flow of Information Principles
1. Governments should allow the free flow of information globally.
a. Allowing information to move freely and be stored globally permits the capture of economies of scale and makes it possible to reap the economic benefits associated with the Internet.
2. Governments should not artificially or geographically restrict facilities and information storage.
a. Artificially limiting the location of data geographically reduces the resiliency of the Internet and undermines its stability.
b. Governments should not require that facilities or information be located in a specific country or region.

SIIA member companies rely on the Internet as a platform for free expression, the distribution of content protection by strong intellectual property rules, electronic commerce, cloud computing and a unprecedented range of economic and cultural activities. SIIA is committed to maintaining the openness and viability of a free Internet. SIIA congratulates the Aspen Institute for putting together these principles and for carrying forward this important work. We look forward to working with policy makers to implement them.

Mark MacCarthy, Vice President, Public Policy at SIIA, directs SIIA’s public policy initiatives in the areas of intellectual property enforcement, information privacy, cybersecurity, cloud computing and the promotion of educational technology.

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Filed Under: Policy, Policy - Cloud Computing, PSIG Tagged With: ,
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