Kundra says government's approach to consolidation has been ill-suited

The federal government has spent the last decade having the wrong conversation.

Federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra believes the discussion around consolidation and standards has been at too high of a level.

"There are enough issues around a departmental level and we haven't done a good job historically on just looking at consolidation that could be done at that level," Kundra says.

"We have first order issues around whether HHS or Treasury are consolidating and are they using same common platforms around infrastructure and software."

Kundra says there has been guidance, but not solutions or platforms agencies can leverage. And that is what the Office of Management and Budget wants to do through its cloud computing initiative, he says.

"What is alterative when agencies were told to move toward standard X, Y or Z?" says Kundra Wednesday at the National Defense University's conference on cloud computing in Washington.

"What needs to happen is we start rolling platforms across the board and at the same time really look at infrastructure spend because that is where significant dollars are being spent when it comes to IT."

Kundra says agencies spend $30 billion on infrastructure a year out of $76 billion total IT spending.

"It is thinking of government more as a platform," he says. "A lot of efforts have been around agency X will drive problem Y. Instead of saying, what is platform that makes the most sense and how do we make sure everybody is able to leverage that platform. And then by default, you start moving toward standardization and interoperability across the board, rather than starting with the assumption that what's there is perfect and you just have to scale it. And that is a huge distinction in terms of leveraging some of the newer technology that is out there."

And that is Kundra's premise for moving the agencies toward cloud computing.

He says part of this effort will be to create a storefront, hosted by the General Services Administration, where agencies can buy cloud services—infrastructure, software or platform—and specific applications with a click of a button.

GSA had said they hoped to get the cloud storefront in place by July 31. But Kundra would not comment on whether that still is the plan.

"Why not say, we understand there is a competitive process, we understand we have to get certification and accreditation and vendors must be FISMA compliant, how do we make it in federal government the buyers in agencies are able to have the same experience you and I have in our personnel lives?" says Kundra

The General Services Administration issued a request for information in May for infrastructure as a service, and received about 30 responses. Those responses are, in part, driving OMB's direction.

Kundra says the CIO Council task force continues to look at how the government can make cloud computing work. OMB also is working with the Defense Department and NASA to better understand what the needs are around a private cloud for sensitive or classified data.

"One solution will not fit everyone's needs," Kundra says. "Some information must remain on a government operated infrastructure. But other information needs to be widely disseminated and does not have to be on a private cloud."

He says OMB is at the very early stages of what a private cloud would look like. He calls it a "huge effort" to ensure the security and technologies of the private cloud are similar to what is available in the consumer space.

"The shift here is shifting us toward service oriented technology delivery rather than technology for technology sake," he says.

"On software as a service, we've already used a lot of these technologies. If you looked at President's town hall meeting, we had over 100,000 participants and over four million people actively comment, which helped us shape policies and helped us get feedback. We literally were able to turn that around, not in years, but in weeks."

He also points to the open government initiative where OMB provisioned and turned on a service in days, and not months or years.

"What we are recognizing is the utility of cloud computing, especially those technologies in the consumer space," Kundra says.

He says part of reason agencies haven't used these technologies previously is procuring them has been too complex.

"I've talked to CIOs, buyers, business unit leaders across the government, and one of the biggest challenges is that if they want to provision services they have to go through so many steps that it is far easier for them to spend 10 times the money so they could do it in house, built it and provision it rather than leverage what is already out there," he says. "It's unacceptable in my view that it would take us a year or so to roll out solutions you could roll out in your personal life in minutes."

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On the Web:

FederalNewsRadio -- First to the cloud: agency infrastructures

FederalNewsRadio -- OMB's Kundra sees innovation in the cloud

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