SIIA’s Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) today applauded the Obama Administration for updating its 2014 budget guidance to address cloud computing. The new section on cloud computing, released Aug. 3 as part of revised guidance for IT investments and e-government (exhibits 53 and 300), will assist federal agencies in making cloud investments part of their 2014 budget requests.

Cloud computing has become a key priority for the federal government, and we’re pleased to see the cloud-first vision reflected in the OMB’s budget guidelines. The new guidance is a big step toward making cloud computing a reality for the federal government. It ensures that agencies are able to plan investments in cloud technologies that can reduce costs and more effectively serve citizens. SIIA looks forward to continuing to work with the Administration to bring transformational cloud technologies to the federal marketplace.

In a June whitepaper, the SIIA Public Sector Innovation Group, which launched in March to help technology firms take advantage of the evolving federal investment in cloud-related technologies, asked the Obama Administration to review the current OMB Exhibit 300 process to ensure its relevancy in today’s world of on-demand computing. The advice was one of five key recommendations aimed at helping federal CIOs and IT companies work together to effectively transition to a new cloud-based environment.

The OMB new guidance calls for agencies to complete an agency cloud computing portfolio as part of the Exhibit 53 process (Exhibit 53C). This section requires agencies to conduct a cloud computing alternatives evaluation, as well as report at the agency level any costs directly attributable to cloud computing implementations, operations or services. Under the guidance, cloud investments are to be reported for prior year, current year and budget year both by deployment model (Public, Private, Community, Hybrid) and service model (PaaS, SaaS and IaaS).

Last week’s Federal Times ran an op-ed by SIIA’s own Mike Hettinger. In the article, Mike describes the future of federal computing in the cloud – and what decision makers need to do to make the federal cloud a success. Specifically, he shares three suggestions:

1) Create a comprehensive federal information technology road map

Currently, the Office of Management and Buddy Strategy fails to prioritize agency IT initiatives within its strategy documents. This needs to change to avoid confusion. Writes Hettinger:

Today, agencies must interpret myriad Office of Management and Budget strategy documents involving cloud computing, shared services and data center consolidation — supplemented by the recent digital government strategy. The result is confusion around prioritization of agency IT initiatives, as evidenced by public comment from the cloud computing industry.

2) Modernize acquisition practices to discard the on-site IT model and embrace the off-site, on-demand nature of cloud computing

The current acquisition process is outdated, and in desperate need of a re-haul in the modern IT world.

Current IT acquisition regulations, mainly those espoused in the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act and modified along the way, were written for a different time — one in which agencies sought to make capital investments in IT systems, servers and other durable IT. In today’s world of cloud computing, agencies should no longer look to make capital investments in IT but rather should invest in acquiring IT on demand and in purchasing services and capabilities.

3) Improve FedRAMP

In June, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) reached its initial operating capabilities to certify businesses that meet federal cloud services standards. But cloud service providers (CSPs) are concerned the program will create extra red tape for CSPs and give an unfair advantage to the first companies through the gate.

Many CSPs are concerned that FedRAMP, while well-intended, could become a bottleneck because of the limited capacity of the FedRAMP-certified third-party assessors who will evaluate applicants, and because of the approval schedule, which projects to have only three companies certified under the program by the end of 2012. Those three appear to have a leg up on the competition as we head into 2013… Clearly, there is merit in providing CSPs with a Joint Authorization Board-approved provisional authorization that can be employed agency-to-agency, showing that their cloud environment meets minimum security requirements. In theory, this should reduce some of the administrative burden on providers and the government alike.

The government has the building blocks in place to transform its IT infrastructure, but as Mike explains, some core issues must be addressed for federal IT reform to reach its full potential.

Tracy Carlin is a Communications and Public Policy Intern at SIIA. She is also a first year graduate student at Georgetown University’s Communication, Culture and Technology program where she focuses on intersections in education, video games and gender.

The Government Accountability Office issued a report yesterday highlighting seven key challenges that remain for federal agencies to effectively implement cloud computing.  These are:

1. Meeting Federal Security Requirements
2. Obtaining guidance
3. Acquiring knowledge and expertise
4. Certifying and accrediting vendors
5. Ensuring data portability and interoperability
6. Overcoming cultural barriers
7. Procuring services on a consumption (on-demand) basis

Addressing these issues is key to effectively implementing cloud computing broadly across the federal government, a goal SIIA fully supports. In fact, the recommendations track very closely with the recommendations made by SIIA in its whitepaper, Beyond the 25 Point Plan:  A Roadmap to Implementing Cloud Computing and Reforming Federal IT, released last month in conjunction with the 18-month anniversary of the 25 Plan and NIST Cloud Workshop V.

SIIA is pleased to see the continued focus of the Obama Administration on promoting IT as an enabler to reduce the cost of government and improve services to citizens.  We are also pleased that the GAO report found the same common issues facing federal agencies as were highlighted in our whitepaper.

SIIA’s whitepaper called for the consolidation of the guidance implementing Cloud First, Shared First/Shared Services and the Data Center Consolidation Initiative along with any future IT initiatives into a comprehensive IT roadmap.  If accomplished, this would go a long way to ensuring that agencies had clear guidance as they move forward with implementing cloud solutions.

The whitepaper also called for a continued focus on developing the IT acquisition workforce, breaking down cultural barriers that might hinder cloud adoption, making changes to the capital planning and IT acquisition regulations to allow acquisition to keep pace with technology and making sure the FedRAMP is open and functions effectively for all market participants.

The good news here is that the hardest part of solving a problem is identifying what it is.  Now that we have clear consensus on the challenges, we can continue to work together towards the solution. With this collective strength, federal IT leaders and leading IT companies can work together to comprehensively evolve the federal IT environment to catalyze government operations for the 21st Century.