Federal Cloud in FY15: Old Roadblocks, 3 New Opportunities

Photo of Chris Wiedemannby Chris Wiedemann, Senior Analyst

The Government Accountability Office Here is A Snapshot of Cloud in FY15(GAO) recently released a report tracking the progress of seven agencies’ in achieving their cloud computing implementation goals; unfortunately parts of it made for quite a nostalgic reading. The report profiled seven agencies – including HHS, Treasury, and USDA – and noted while each of these agencies increased their cloud spending between FY12 and FY14, the grand total of agency-reported cloud investments was only $529 million (averaging 2% of evaluated IT budgets). In other words, despite the 25 Point Plan instituting a Cloud First policy in 2011, federal agencies appear to have made very little progress in meeting their cloud goals; some reasons cited for slow adoption sound awfully familiar as well – with security concerns and cultural resistance to cloud computing coming up yet again.

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The FirstNet Initiative: A Rare Opportunity in the Federal, State & Local Arena

Tomas OKeefe_65x85by Tomas O’Keefe, Senior Analyst

It’s not often that there are opportunities that stretch across multiple federal government agencies that also expand in to the state & local space, but they do occur from time to time. The First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) initiative is one of those rare opportunities that you will want to keep an eye on. FirstNet is still in its infancy, more or less, as the program management office is still being stood up and standards are still being discussed among the component agencies that will work in concert to develop the network like Commerce’s National Telecommunications & Information Administration and folks within DHS’s National Protection and Programs Directorate.

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