Cloud computing Archives

Homeland Security officials confirmed they have nixed a project that was supposed to tie together the department's financial systems, instead opting to consider a smaller network located remotely, in the cloud.

Friday morning, Nextgov reported that DHS yanked the Transformation and Systems Consolidation program, or TASC, after current contractors on existing systems and a Web services company protested a $450 million contract the department awarded to CACI last year.

"Based upon a review and reevaluation of the solicitation, DHS is considering alternatives to meet revised requirements," DHS spokesman Chris Ortman said Friday, referring to the department's decision to stop pursuing a centralized financial, asset and acquisition management system. "The modernization of the department's financial, acquisition and asset systems remains a key priority for DHS."

In March, federal auditors, in siding with one of the protesters, Global Computer Enterprises, a provider of online financial reporting and accounting services, ruled that DHS narrowed system requirements mid-competition without letting vendors submit new proposals. Homeland Security changed directions after the White House directed all agencies halt work on financial systems, a characteristically complex kind of IT project, and either scale back features or cancel the whole operation.

As for future plans, DHS officials said a cloud-based or shared services setup, where multiple agencies share server room in a government or contractor-operated data center, could meet the department's needs. The new model would attempt to connect fewer agencies and fewer tools, just the core financial management functions at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This marks the second time the department, which also recently abandoned a more than $1 billion border virtual fence, has lost money on a failed effort to unify its financial systems. Some lawmakers remain concerned that any future project will falter due to poor planning, no matter whether the system resides in the cloud or in a physical DHS data center.

"Most of the material weaknesses still on the books are related to processes and not systems, and regardless of what decisions DHS makes on how it will integrate its information systems, the underlying processes must be corrected for that system to function properly," Rep. Todd Platts, R-Pa., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Organization, Efficiency and Financial Management, said at a Friday hearing on the department's overall financial management.

Senate Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller has postponed a computer security hearing to attend the funeral of Judge M. Blane Michael, a proponent of digital privacy who served as Rockefeller's special counsel during his first term as governor of West Virginia, aides for the senator said on Monday.

Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has not yet announced a new date for the hearing, previously scheduled for Wednesday, which was to examine the economic ramifications of cyber threats in the private sector.

Last year, Michael, who sat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, lectured to students at his alma mater New York University School of Law that the Internet may undermine the Fourth Amendment's search and seizure protections: "The digital age is placing our privacy in jeopardy. Technological advances in the way we communicate and store information make us increasingly vulnerable to intrusive searches and seizures."

The disconnect between analogue-era privacy and communications laws and the evolving, online nature of criminal activity has been the subject of several congressional hearings during the past year. Lawmakers are considering updating civil liberties legislation, such as the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, as well as establishing new computer crime rules as part of comprehensive cyber legislation.

During his speech, Michael noted that people store their digital files, including love letters, diaries and financial records, on an Internet service provider's remote server, so that they can access their documents from any computer.

"But online storage also raises questions about whether we retain any Fourth Amendment privacy interest in files once we store them remotely because they are then technically accessible to the Internet service provider," he said.

Michael cited a case that involved the government's seizure of Google's email servers, which house millions of people's personal data, just to look for just a few incriminating messages.

"In evaluating whether there is a privacy interest in personal files stored online, the current framework leaves room for considering other sources of interpretation, including the Fourth Amendment's formative history and contemporary norms and circumstances," he said.

On Friday, Rockefeller said in a statement that Michael was unvarnished in his honesty, uncanny in his humor and unequaled in his humility. He called him "a brilliant judge who never took for granted the power and the responsibility of deciding the cases that impacted people's lives or righted serious wrongs.

"I will be forever fortunate to call him my dearest friend and confidant - the kind you just trust to his very core and whose deep, easy companionship abides with you for a lifetime," he said.

It's all cloud, all the time in federal IT these days, especially since the Office of Management and Budget ordered agencies to take a cloud-first approach to IT projects. Mary Davie, assistant commissioner for the Office of Integrated Technology Services in the General Services Administration's Federal Acquisition Service, provides a reality check on cloud mania today, with a blog post aimed at busting four myths about cloud computing in the federal sector.

Those myths, according to Davie, are:

• Cloud can be anything.
• Public clouds are not secure, and agencies can't control security requirements.
• Agencies will lose control of their data.
• Moving to the cloud is difficult.

The Defense Department organization charged with cyber combat is reinforcing military networks by moving much of DoD's computing to a space many civilian agencies view as insecure - the cloud. Cloud computing is the practice of storing and accessing applications in a shared online environment, instead of on in-house servers.

U.S. Cyber Command chief Gen. Keith Alexander told lawmakers on Wednesday the following:

"The idea is to reduce vulnerabilities inherent in the current architecture and to exploit the advantages of cloud computing and thin-client networks, moving the programs and the data that users need away from the thousands of desktops we now use--up to a centralized configuration that will give us wider availability of applications and data combined with tighter control over accesses and vulnerabilities and more timely mitigation of the latter."

The White House has been pressing agencies to outsource information technology services to the Web as a way of phasing out the federal government's more than 2,000 expensive, energy-sucking data centers. But many federal managers are fearful of losing their data in the cloud. What happens in the event of an online outage or if the communal, off-site servers storing their programs are hacked?

Alexander's explanation as to why the cloud will offer Defense good defense:

"This architecture would seem at first glance to be vulnerable to insider threats -- indeed, no system that human beings use can be made immune to abuse -- but we are convinced the controls and tools that will be built into the cloud will ensure that people cannot see any data beyond what they need for their jobs and will be swiftly identified if they make unauthorized attempts to access data."

You can't go anywhere in the federal IT world these days without hearing someone wax poetic about virtualization and cloud computing. Are you one of those people who nods your head during such conversations without knowing exactly what people are talking about?

Have no fear: Carolyn Marsan, a longtime technology writer and regular contributor to Government Executive and Nextgov, has patiently explained the concepts, how they are related and why they're so important right now, in a new Expert Dialogue right here on Nextgov. So stop by and get educated. We promise not to tell.

The Energy Department unveiled a redesigned website on Monday with an eye toward the future.

The "roll out is another significant step forward in our effort to become a more transparent, participatory and accessible department," said Cammie Croft, director of new media and citizen engagement, in a blog post. "However, we know we have a lot more work to do."

Croft said Energy wants to turn its site into a "cutting-edge, 21st century interactive information platform." To that effect, Energy has begun moving the site to Drupal, an open source management system.

New features include:

• Vintage DOE, which takes a look at an item from Energy's archives and discusses the department's current work on the issue. The focus is on videos.
• Energy Matters, a live-chat series. Secretary Steven Chu will host the first session later this month.
• Profiles within the department's blog, highlighting the impact of energy programs.

White House officials on Thursday morning released a 25-point implementation plan to execute one of the biggest information technology contracting overhauls since the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act.

The problem the plan aims to tackle: Productivity gains in the private sector have outpaced government performance even though federal agencies spent about $600 billion during the past decade on technology to boost efficiency. The Obama administration's policy roadmap aims to dismantle the old way of installing new technology - which has been to design overly-ambitious systems that fall years behind in development - and create new procedures for quickly and cheaply upgrading machinery.

Here are some of the standouts on the to-do list:

• Reshape or terminate at least one-third of underperforming projects in the government's $80 billion IT portfolio within the next 18 months.
• Shift to a "cloud first" policy, where agencies consider moving to Web-based software and hardware before spending money on new systems. Each agency will identify three must-move services within three months, shift one of those services to the cloud within 12 months and then transition the remaining two within 18 months.
• Within 12 months, establish a tech fellows program modeled after the Presidential Management Fellows program to recruit graduate students with in-demand talents into IT program management.
• By mid-June, launch a website where industry and agency contracting officials can collaborate prior to the issuance of requests for proposals.

The Agriculture Department just one-upped the General Services Administration: USDA announced the morning that it has become the first Cabinet-level agency to move e-mail and other applications to the cloud. According to a Microsoft release, the department will move 120,000 employees from an internal messaging and collaboration to Microsoft's BPOS-Federal cloud-based solution over the next month.

"Through the power of the cloud, USDA personnel will have better access to information and improved data sharing capabilities, all while reducing computing costs and building on existing investments," the company said.

We'll have more details on this soon.

The Treasury Department launched a new website Monday that aims to increase communication with the public and includes the agency's first ever blog.

"The new Treasury.gov website is a major step forward in our efforts to improve the way citizens access the wealth of data and information Treasury produces on a day-to-day basis," said Dan Tangherlini, chief performance and chief financial officer of the agency, in a news release. "For the first time, [the site] will use advanced technologies like cloud computing, an official blog, and data visualizations to better communicate and connect with citizens."

The new site is hosted in a public cloud, uses a content management system and includes the agency's first ever blog.

Among other features are data visualizations, which support interactive data including interest rates and Recovery Act statistics.

The agency also is seeking feedback about the new site through an online portal.

During a webcast next Thursday morning, Office of Management and Budget officials will flesh out the Obama administration's recently-announced strategy to update the way agencies acquire and access information technology. The Dec. 9 Forum on IT Management Reform will be held at the White House at 8:30 a.m. and streamed live here, according to an administration official.

Federal Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients and federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra will discuss detailed execution plans for the initiative and take questions from government IT managers and contracting officials, as well as IT vendors.

The thrust of the strategy -- which was unveiled Nov. 19 -- is to expedite the process of upgrading IT systems by moving equipment online to the cloud; matching the technology refresh cycle with the congressional appropriations cycle; cultivating a cadre of professional program managers; encouraging communication between agency managers and the IT community; and holding in-person meetings with senior executives and program managers to review projects.