Digital Government Accelerating in Cloud IT

 

In 1965 there was a proposal to to create one massive federal data center.  It was stopped by a public outcry about invasion of privacy and because it would have cost about $12 million a year.

Instead, by 2011 there were 2,094 federal data centers scattered around the globe at a cost of about $80 billion/yr.  Now they there’s concerted movement to reverse the trend, move to the cloud, and reduce the data center number by about half.  

So what is the US Government cloud progress and how fast is it moving?  

By all reports, progress is good and benefits are being realized faster than anyone expected.   The results could be $18.8 billion in annual savings within a few years.

How’s that for exceeding expectations? 

Looking at IT energy efficiency, sustainability and ultimately cloud IT, the US government is a most fascinating case to follow.  They are the biggest IT user in the world.  So the striking pace of cloud IT progress made across nearly every agency and department is impressive.  There is a concerted effort to internalize cloud concepts with some demonstrated creativity on multiple fronts.  

These are political times and I have no intent to be political here.  That said, the appointment of the first CIO for the United States in 2009 and an ongoing push by the White House that created the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy has certainly influenced the speed of government cloud adoption.

Then, in May of this year, came a White House directive to launch “a comprehensive strategy to build a “21^st Century Digital Government”. Steven VanRoekel, the current US CIO, calls it a “coordinated, information and customer-centric approach to changing how the government works and delivers services to the American people.”

VanRoekel also shows the savings in his flat budget.  And he shows it in his mission statement:

       “We will aspire to promote a bright and prosperous future for the United States through the strategic use of Federal Information Technology.”