U.S. CIO's News Conference on Cloud Computing and Apps.gov
Sep 15, 2009
At a press conference this morning at NASA's Ames Research Center, U.S. federal CIO Vivek Kundra demoed the new Apps.gov site and evangelized the Obama administration's plans for "unleashing the power of cloud computing."
While he referred to the strategy as a journey that he acknowledged could take a decade to complete, he argued that cloud computing services would mean lower costs, greater efficiencies and a greener computing environment for government agencies and their employees.
Kundra reminded the audience that over $19 billion of the federal government's annual $76 billion IT budget is spent on infrastructure costs, adding that federal IT energy consumption had doubled between 2000 and 2006 in part because federal agencies operate so many data centers.
The hope is that efforts like today's debut of the General Services Administration's (GSA) Apps.gov site will significantly streamline the government's IT operations and costs. For example, in unveiling the Apps.gov storefront, Kundra pointed to the inclusion of several free social media apps that federal agencies can acquire via the site -- while that may seem obvious to people working in the private sector, it represents an important shift in direction for government agencies.
Kundra emphasized the need to make sure it's easy both for the industry to offer solutions to government buyers and for federal employees to acquire new technologies. He also acknowledged the need to work with the private sector to address the privacy and security concerns associated with cloud computing, a challenge that will be the subject of much discussion going forward.
Visit Apps.gov to tour the site and watch a video about cloud computing that was shown at the news conference.
Tags:
Apps.gov, cloud computing, gov 2.0, privacy, social media, transparency, Vivek Kundra, White House
