White House unveils cloud computing initiative
The administration's cloud computing initiative is getting started immediately, at least in small measure, on the brand-new Apps.gov Web site.
(Credit: Apps.gov)MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--The Obama administration on Tuesday announced a far-reaching and long-term cloud computing policy intended to cut costs on infrastructure and reduce the environmental impact of government computing systems.
Speaking at NASA's Ames Research Center here, federal CIO Vivek Kundra unveiled the administration's first formal efforts to roll out a broad system designed to leverage existing infrastructure and in the process, slash federal spending on information technology, especially expensive data centers.
According to Kundra, the federal government today has an IT budget of $76 billion, of which more than $19 billion is spent on infrastructure alone. And within that system, he said, the government "has been building data center after data center," resulting in an environment in which the Department of Homeland Security alone, for example, has 23 data centers.
Obama administration CIO Vivek Kundra on Tuesday unveiled the government's new cloud computing initiative.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)All told, this has resulted in a doubling of federal energy consumption from 2000 to 2006. "We cannot continue on this trajectory," Kundra said.
That's why the administration is now committed to a policy of reducing infrastructure spending and instead, relying on existing systems, at least as much as is possible, given security considerations, Kundra said.
As an example of what's possible with cloud computing, Kundra pointed to a revamping of the General Services Administration's USA.gov site. Using a traditional approach to add scalability and flexibility, he said, it would have taken six months and cost the government $2.5 million a year. But by turning to a cloud computing approach, the upgrade took just a day and cost only $800,000 a year.
But while some of the benefits of the administration's cloud computing initiative are on display today--mainly at the brand new Apps.gov Web site--Kundra's presentation was short on specifics and vague about how long it may take the government to transition fully to its new paradigm.
Indeed, Kundra hinted that it could take as much as a decade to complete the cloud computing "journey."
Three-part initiative
While repeatedly referencing the realities that many government efforts must make allowances in their IT needs for security, Kundra argued strongly that in many other cases, there is little reason that federal agencies cannot turn to online resources for quick, easy, and cheap provisioning of applications.
As a result, the first major element of the initiative is the brand new Apps.gov site, a clearinghouse for business, social media, and productivity applications, as well as cloud IT services. To be sure, the site isn't fully functional yet. In fact, a brief survey of it resulted in a series of error messages. But it's evident that the administration hopes that for many agencies, the site will eventually be a one-stop shop for the kinds of services that to date have required extensive IT spending, and Kundra said he believes that some at the Department of Energy has already been using the site for some of its needs.
The second element of the effort, Kundra said, will be budgeting. For fiscal year 2010, the administration will be pushing cloud computing pilot projects, reflecting the effort's priority and hopes that many lightweight workflows can be moved into the cloud. For fiscal 2011, it will be issuing guidance to agencies throughout government.
Finally, the initiative will include policy planning and architecture that will be made up of centralized certifications, target architecture and security, privacy, and procurement concerns. Kundra said every effort will be made to ensure that data is protected and secure, and that whatever changes are made are "pragmatic and responsible."
Clearly, though, the administration has seen benefits in the way private industry uses cloud computing, and intends to mirror those benefits. Ultimately, he added, the idea is to make it simple for agencies to procure the applications they need. "Why should the government pay for and build infrastructure that may be available for free," Kundra said.
One inspiration, he explained, are advances the government has already seen in the streamlining of student aid application forms. The so-called FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) form is "more complicated" than the federal 1040 tax form, Kundra said. But in a joint effort between the IRS and the Department of Education, it has become possible with one click of a mouse button for IRS data to populate the FAFSA form, Kundra said, eliminating more than 70 questions and 20 screens.
That, then, should be the kind of thing that the government seeks to do across the board, ultimately delivering large savings to taxpayers and significantly reducing the environmental impact of government IT systems.
Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net culture, and everything in between. E-mail Daniel. 
Obama Bad! Obama Bad!
(NOTE: I am actually a Republican, but I am sick of any article that even remotely relates to Obama being turned into a 'Obama is the antichrist' whinefest.)
Americans, don't let POLITICAL TERRORISTS SCARE YOU INTO A TON OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES CREATED BY THE REPUBLICAN PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENICS!
"go back to Kenya" eh? A little closet bigot slipped out of you just then.
Firefox, Chrome, Safari & Opera have already made significant progress with HTML5, but IE is lagging, as usual.
We can save money implement any thing they want BUT WILL IT BE SECURE!!!
There is only one really safe security protocol... and the government does not use it
Furthermore, tell me you like The Cloud the next time your internet service goes down. All a terrorist needs to do is knock out a couple of servers, and under this plan the whole government goes offline.
Beautifully not-thought-out. Just like health care. Just like Guantanamo. Just like the bailouts.
How about paying attention to what you read that way you don't start sounding like one of those POLITICAL TERRORISTS.
Health care is a mess and has been for a while. Americans pay more than any other nation for health care that's rated 36th in the world. I know retardicans hate fixing real problems, but this real problem needs to be fixed.
Gitmo is a mess caused by retardicans and their beloved fuhrer bushit, it shouldn't ever have been to begin with. My issue with Obama on this front is he's not acting fast enough, we're still holding people there - many of which have absolutely no ties to "turrism" in any way and were only sold to us by foreign governments because we were stupid enough to "buy" them.
The bailouts wouldn't have been necessary if the retardicans could have managed the economy to begin with, or are we still blaming Obama for a disaster that started months before he was even elected?
Got any more idiocy to show off?
Try the following Acid3 test, on IE 8 (or earlier) and compare the results to Firefox 3.5, Chrome 2, Safari 4 and/or Opera 10 (see Wikipedia, for a description of Acid3).
http://acid3.acidtests.org/
You should see results, something like this:
Chrome 2.0 - 100/100
Safari 4.0 - 100/100
Opera 10 - 100/100
Firefox 3.5.3 - 93/100
IE 8 - 20/100
Now...try viewing the following HTML5 video, with IE 8 (or earlier). You CANNOT!
http://demo.sproutcore.com/video/
Try viewing this same video with Chrome or Safari. You CAN! And, it looks AWESOME!
Microsoft prefers to do what it wants, the way it wants, whenever it wants. And, as a result of IE's large market share, this makes the lives of web developers miserable & stifles web innovation.
The internet community can change this:
- Encourage/help your family & friends, to move to standards-compliant browsers.
- Encourage your employer, to use a standards-compliant browser (or install a 2nd, if there's an IE dependency).
- Have standards-compliant browsers installed on shared computers (libraries, schools, internet cafes, ...).
- Buy PCs from vendors who default to a standards-compliant browser (e.g. Sony & Apple).
- Buy smartphones, eReaders & other mobile devices, equipped with standards-compliant browsers.
- Buy game consoles, TVs, set-top boxes, etc., equipped with standards-compliant browsers.
"Video tag not supported by your browser"
Got that in Chrome.
Your anti IE post = fail. I use IE at times and Chrome at times. Both pull up all web pages I go to from day to day just fine. You need another hobby
I use dev version of Chrome 4.0 under Ubuntu & HTML5 video works great. I don't know what version of Chrome you are using. I think Chrome 3.0 also supports HTML5 video.
Re. pages looking fine in IE, of course! Because of IE's market share, websites MUST make it work in IE. That's the problem. Websites first build their sites to open standards & then they have to kludge them, to work with IE.
Why should web developers, all around the world, be burdened with this extra work? I seem to recall reading that some web developers refuse to support IE6 or charge 50% more for a website, if it needs to support IE6. Ridiculous!
People can help eliminate this burden, by just moving to a non-IE web browser. Microsoft's priority is to entrench their proprietary Silverlight on the internet (i.e. to achieve web lock-in), not supporting & promoting open web standards.
I smell a rat... again.
Don't take my word for it... look here. http://ow.ly/pwXC
If you want to be taken seriously, learn to post once (sorry, maybe it was an accident?) and use a real URL people can read (I'm not sorry, in a blog post that was just inexcusable).
Something looks fishy.
Don't take my word for it... look here. http://ow.ly/pwXC
Privacy? What's that?
-Thomas Anthony
http://www.acleaningbid.com
- by TAnthony1 September 16, 2009 10:33 AM PDT
- Hhmmm.... half the letters of the word bureaucratic didn't make the trip. Or maybe I just can't spell.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(31 Comments)-Tom