‘Government as a Platform’: How Cloud Computing Is Progressing Inside The Beltway
February 24, 2014
Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.
Cloud computing is more than just the latest in a series of attempts to pare down government spending — it’s a gateway to unprecedented innovation in a sector known more for bureaucratic inertia. That’s the view of Dr. Rick Holgate, president of the American Council for Technology (ACT), an independent advisory group of federal agency CIOs. In his view, cloud is one of three forces of innovation sweeping U.S. federal agencies, along with restructuring and opening up to private industry partnerships.
I recently caught up with Holgate, who is CIO of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, to talk about the disruptive forces that are reshaping the federal government. Cloud computing is the first and foremost of such forces – “bringing about more modern and more flexible, agile ways of delivering services and technology to our customers,” he says. “We’re really thinking different about we build services and build solutions.”…
How is the adoption of cloud progressing inside the Beltway, among government agencies? While launched with great promise several years ago, a recent Accenture survey of 286 federal IT executives suggests that progress has been slow to date. The initial effort, the 2011 Federal Cloud Computing Strategy known as “Cloud First,” required federal agencies to consider cloud-based solutions anytime new solutions are sought. More recently, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that only one of of 20 cloud migration plans submitted by agencies to the GAO in 2012 was complete, and only 10 percent of agencies had migrated the bulk of their IT assets to the cloud. The Accenture study shows about 30 percent have implemented cloud strategies…
Read more from the source @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2014/02/23/government-as-a-platform-how-cloud-computing-is-progressing-inside-the-beltway/