Government in the Cloud

There is a push for the Federal Government to venture into the “cloud”. That’s cloud computing. The Government has a massive IT infrastructure requiring a large amount of personnel to operate and maintain it. The cost is astronomical and the procurement process is lengthy, complicated, and many times, wasteful. I was a former Government Contracting Officer. I spent many September 30’s purchasing millions of dollars worth of IT equipment. “Spend it or lose it” was our motto, unfortunately. Money left over at the end of each fiscal year (September 30th for the Federal Government) would be dumped into fast purchases due to the “obligation by 12:00 midnight” rule. The fastest purchases were usually related to IT systems. I have purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of computers which afterward, sit in a warehouse only to be outdated by the time resources were allocated to install them. Now, the General Services Administration (GSA) is venturing into a solution to this problem; Cloud Computing.

As briefly mentioned above, the Federal Government has an extensive infrastructure, a broad user base, a variety of missions, and complex applications. To address these challenges, the Federal CIO Council has ordered the government to take a look into cloud computing services. Some of the benefits include a reduction in data centers and server farms. This will decrease oversight and energy requirements involved in housing and cooling the servers.  According to the GSA, the Federal Government has hundreds of these centers around the country that often perform similar tasks, such as providing email or web hosting and are generally used at a fraction of their capability. They typically have large carbon footprints due to their enormous energy consumption, and have to comply with strict environmental controls. GSA feels that cloud computing can be viewed as the green computing option, as it promotes sustainability and has a much smaller carbon footprint by limiting duplicated efforts and utilizing computing power more efficiently. Cloud computing also offers scalability, meaning you can scale capacity and processing power on-demand.

Although cloud computing is evolving within the government, it is not yet an immediate solution for all government computing needs. Security is the main problem the government faces in the “cloud”.  As a solution, Jeremiah Grossman, founder and chief technology officer of White Hat Security, in Santa Clara, CA, says that a security audit should be part of the approval process, and government agencies should pay attention to what types of data are being handled by each cloud service. Grossman notes that it’s a good idea to check any Web application against common attacks used on the Internet, such as cross-site scripting. With that in mind, Grossman says, “From just general business and competition dynamics, I think cloud computing can advance Web security like nothing else before.” When one customer demands certain security features of a cloud service, those features are automatically delivered to other customers of the same service, he says. (http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23501/)

Having transmitted secret data during wartime, I would have felt less comfortable knowing it went through the “cloud”. I think the process is far too new in the development phase. I’m not very smart when it comes to IT but I’m pretty sure that secret data floating around in centralized, civilian data bases would pose a security threat. I also think that routine unclassified data on these data bases would create a vulnerability. Compiled data is like putting a puzzle together; once together, the picture is clear. In other words, putting bits and pieces of data together could create a classified situation.  I’m not totally against the cloud, but I think more innovations need to evolve before classified information is transferred over it. For now, we should let CNN keep handling our secret data and keep the politicians in the “cloud”.