According to Google, the primary benefits of cloud computing for government can be summed up as:
Improving Security - Under legacy computing models, data is stored on local computers – this is the equivalent of keeping cash under your mattress. Storing data securely in the cloud is like keeping cash in a bank.
Saving Money - Research has found that government agencies that switched to some form of cloud computing saw up to 50 percent savings. To put that in context, the federal government is currently spending $76 billion per year on IT, with $20 billion of that devoted to hardware, software and file servers.
Improving efficiency and collaboration - Federal employees can collaborate more easily and effectively because information and applications run in a shared, secure space online, making it easy for people to work together on documents. Millions of individuals, businesses, and governments are already enjoying these benefits.
Bradshaw outlined how many departments are already involved in cloud computing pilots and initiatives, and outlined how these could result in greater innovation and cost savings:
Though the federal government is adopting at a slower rate compared to industry, we are beginning to see government cloud initiatives and pilot programs.The public sector is already adopting cloud at all levels of government to better serve citizens, reduce costs, lower energy consumption and make more effective use of taxpayer dollars overall.Federal entities currently using the cloud include the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Department of the Interior, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Social Security Administration, the Security and Exchange Commission, and the General Services Administration.
Simply put, cloud computing is already here and being used every day by individuals, business, and government. But we believe that the federal government could move more quickly, and by doing so it could reap benefits similar to those enjoyed by the private sector. The opportunity to switch to the cloud means that the approximately $80 billion per year market for federal government IT will see more innovation and competition – along with cost and energy savings, which are critical in today’s environment.
There is a tremendous opportunity for Canada to position itself as a world leader in Cloud Computing and to benefit from the economic, environmental and technological returns of this new public utility.
Why Canada?
Due to its geographical characteristics, cooler temperatures and low-density population (particularly as one moves farther north in Canada), IT expertise, quality construction standards, legislative framework (including the Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act) and low-cost green energy, Canada is considered a prime location for Cloud Computing.
Canada has a reputation of being a highly desirable outsourcing location for companies from around the world because of factors such as our well-educated talent pool, multicultural population, geopolitical stability and relatively low cost of conducting business.
Gov IT
The Government of Canada spends approximately $5 billion annually on information technologies (IT) and Budget 2009 has set aside $12 billion to accelerate and expand federal investments in different infrastructure projects, including:
$225 million over three years to develop and implement a strategy on extending broadband coverage to unserved communities to close the broadband gap in rural and remote communities.
$1 billion over five years for the Green Infrastructure Fund to support projects such as sustainable energy;
$500 million over the next two years for infrastructure projects in small communities;
$750 million for leading-edge research infrastructure through the Canada Foundation for Innovation; and
$500 million to Canada Health Infoway to encourage the greater use of electronic health records.
Moving forward
Recent research indicates that 75% of Chief Information Officers (CIO)indicated that they will need and use Cloud Computing in the near future. Research also identifies that the US Government would save US$6.6B over the next three years through Cloud Computing. Just on the energy front alone, it is estimated that $5B in electrical power could be saved in the US through Cloud Computing.
The move toward Cloud Computing is inevitable and it is happening across the globe and Canada has a definite advantage on other countries around the world.
Canadians can benefit through prompt, coordinated and sustained action within Canada, across jurisdictions, and through private-public partnerships.
Canada also needs to show leadership on the international scene, starting with its southern neighbour, the United States, who could become one of Canada’s best allies and supporter since Cloud Computing supports the President’s agenda and Corporate America’s next step.
There exists an opportunity for the Government of Canada to show leadership through the development of a broader Cloud Computing vision. A coordinated effort with Canada’s private sector leaders in the field would be beneficial. The Government of Canada could also engage provincial, territorial and municipal counterparts in defining Canada’s Cloud Computing position through a comprehensive Canadian Cloud Computing Strategy.
Earlier this month, the Brookings Institute hosted a policy forum to explore the economic benefits of cloud computing for local, state, and federal government. Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra delivered a keynote address on the role of the government in developing and promoting cloud computing.
Brookings Vice President Darrell West moderated a panel of experts and detailed the findings in his paper, "Saving Money through Cloud Computing".
NASA has Nebula. DISA has RACE. Both are cloud computing platforms that are showing how the Government can use this technology.
That's the starting point of an interesting report from Jason Miller on Federal News Radio.
The report notes that the Office of Management and Budget will require agencies to develop an alternative analysis discussing how they could use cloud computing for all major technology projects for the fiscal 2012 budget.
As part of this Senate lawmakers have recommended that $15 million should be used for:
improving innovation, efficiency and effectiveness in federal IT, including an initiative on optimizing common services and solutions/cloud computing. This initiative would provide for pilots to identify enterprisewide common solutions to eliminate duplication at the agency level and lower the total cost of federal IT infrastructure.
Of this $15 million, the Committee is including $7.5 million for the Center for IT Excellence proposed by GSA. The center will deploy a selected set of infrastructure services, cloud based applications, offer Infrastructure as a service to agencies, and provide portal government applications.
Several agencies are already using Cloud computing services and platforms, and expect to offer these as resources to other areas of government - in a similar vein to how Amazon offers cloud services to individuals and businesses.
NASA's NEBULA
Speaking about Nebula Chris Kemp, NASA Ames chief information officer, explained more about the Nebula Cloud Computing pilot under development at NASA's Ames Research center. He outlined how a new white paper will explain to agencies how 'to take the Nebula platform and implement it in their own hardware and play around with it'.
Nebula is to the Data center what Linux is to the personal computer...We're trying to have an integrated set of open technologies...that will allow you to have a full self-service cloud platform.
Kemp went on to explain how NASA is trying to make the NASA platform easily accessible to other agencies through GSA's app store. He says NASA will put the platform in the Apps.gov storefront in early 2010 so agencies can use a government credit card to provision space and resources on the platform.
However, he stressed that NASA is not seeking to become another Amazon or Rackspace for the government. Rather they want to create a platform suitable for NASA's needs, which could then be released back to the opensource community or commercial sector, to provide back to NASA.
Nasa is not in the business of providing IT. We're in the business of solving mission problems.
As a corollary to this, he explained how they will be releasing their entire business model to provide visibility and transparency into the structure of the platform and its related costs:
The government in order to adopt cloud computing quickly and take advantage of these opportunities needs to be a smart buyer and understand the technology. The biggest challenge at NASA is not the technology, it's the 50,000 people that need to know how to deploy, procure and implement processes and standards around the technology.
DISA's RACE
The report goes on to discuss the Defense Information Systems Agency's (DISA) cloud computing services. Henry Sienkiewicz, DISA's technical program director for the computer services division, recently announced that Department of Defence users would have the ability 'to self-service provision operating environments within the highly secured Defense Enterprise Computing Center’s (DECC) production environment'.
our users can now customize, purchase, and receive their test and development computing platform within 24 hours and the production environments within 72 hours, and that’s a must for worldwide missions with ever-changing computing requirements. Our goal is to allow software development to securely occur within the decision-making cycle.
The platform already has 3,000 users and hundreds of projects. It's working with other areas of the DoD with parts of the Army and Air Force to host Customer Relationship Management applications, and is discussing moving some of the Microsoft Office suite to the RISE platform.
Sienkiewicz says the goal for all of this is to virtualize at least 50 percent of its environment, and reduce the time it takes to take an application from an idea to production to about a week, instead of the current average of 40 days.
OMB's mandate
The Office of Management and Budget will require agencies in 2010 to participate in pilot projects using cloud computing. Federal News Radio reports that 'Agencies will be expected to tell OMB why they wouldn't use cloud computing for these initiatives [technology projects]'.
Then in 2013, 'agencies must give OMB a complete alternatives analysis for mixed life cycle projects where agencies are spending new money-known as development, modernization and enhancement-and steady state or operations and maintenance funding for how they could move to cloud computing'.
For this reason, NASA and the DISA are trying to help agencies move data and other applications onto their cloud based platforms. If they're to compete for government business with Amazon, Google or Microsoft they need to provide services provisioned easily with a credit card through a web portal.
It looks like NASA and DoD will be providing the cloud computing 'public option'. Whether they win business from agencies will depend on the quality and cost effectiveness of their services, rather than the fact that they're part of the government. It does, however, open up the intriguing prospect of a number of government entities competing for cloud computing business.
For more on GSA's Cloud Computing initiative see the presentation below, or Casey Coleman's session at the recent Gov 2.0 summit.
The City of Los Angeles recently selected Google Apps to replace its current email system for all 34,000 city employees. Los Angeles Chief Technology Officer Randi Levin and Kevin Crawford, Assistant General Manager of LA's Information Technology Agency, discuss the reasons behind the city's decision.
Improved collaboration. Collaborative tools such as instant messaging, video conferencing, and simultaneous review and editing of documents by multiple people, employees will allow emplopees to work more efficiently and collaboratively.
Easier remote access. Easier access to information from any computer with an internet connection, as well as from their mobile phones.
Expanded storage. Employees will have 25x the email storage they have today, saving them from having to make difficult decisions about which emails to keep or delete.
The City of Los Angeles expects to save $5.5 million over five years and achieve a return on investment of up to $20 million.
