Supply Chain Security

Federal Cloud Computing

Overview

The Federal Government’s current Information Technology (IT) environment is characterized by low asset utilization, a fragmented demand for resources, duplicative systems, environments which are difficult to manage, and long procurement lead times. These inefficiencies negatively impact the Federal Government’s ability to serve the American public.

Cloud computing has the potential to play a major part in addressing these inefficiencies and improving government service delivery .The cloud computing model can significantly help agencies grappling with the need to provide highly reliable, innovative services quickly despite resource constraints.

Commercial service providers are expanding their available cloud offerings to include the entire traditional IT stack of hardware and software infrastructure, middleware platforms, application system components, software services, and turnkey applications .The private sector has taken advantage of these technologies to improve resource utilization, increase service responsiveness, and accrue meaningful benefits in efficiency, agility, and innovation Similarly, for the Federal Government, cloud computing holds tremendous potential to deliver public value by increasing operational efficiency and responding faster to constituent needs.

Why governments will face a battle to make it work?

This Federal Cloud Computing Strategy is designed to

• Articulate the benefits, considerations, and trade-offs of cloud computing

• Provide a decision framework and case examples to support agencies in migrating towards cloud computing

• Highlight cloud computing implementation resources

• Identify Federal Government activities and roles and responsibilities for catalyzing cloud adoption.

Following the publication of this strategy, each agency will re-evaluate its technology, sourcing strategy to include consideration and application of cloud computing solutions as part of the budget...