Interesting developments over the last couple days in regards to Cloud Computing within the US Federal Government. I have had the honor of being invited to Washington DC next week to attend the US Federal Government Cloud Computing Summit. The summit is being hosted by the US government's first CIO, Vivek Kundra. The purpose of this invite only meeting is to provide a forum to discuss the opportunities and challenges to implementing cloud computing solutions with-in the federal government.
Recently President Obama has set a directive that the government be innovative and collaborative, the Federal Chief Information Officers Council (CIOC) has established an initiative to explore the application of cloud computing to federal activities. What is becoming clear is cloud computing will play a very important aspect in the US Federal Government's forthcoming IT strategy. As part of this strategy, the CIOC has created a Federal Government’s Working Group on Cloud Computing. The purpose of this event is to solicit information and advice from the private sector on the issues facing the Federal government as it seeks to take advantage of cloud computing technologies.
The American Council for Technology (ACT), a non-profit public-private organization established to help government use IT, has been asked to host the meeting with leading private sector companies involved with cloud computing. The meeting will be held on May 6, 2009 in Washington, DC.
My goal is lobby for a greater cloud centric interoperability mandate from the federal government as well as increased co-operation between the federal government IT organization and the cloud industry, although this meeting itself is a huge step forward.
During the cloud summit I will make sure to mention the following key Issues for cloud computing with in the Federal government.
1. Security & Privacy
2. Data and Application Interoperability & Compatibility
3. Data and Application Portability
4. Governance and Management (IT Cloud Policy)
5. Metering, Monitoring & scaling
6. Mobile Access concerns
If anyone has any points they would like to me raise during the summit, please let me know.
I'll post more details in the coming days including a full overview after the summit.
