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.
Ken Wasch is President of SIIA.
Laura Greenback is Communications Director at SIIA.