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August 29, 2011 By Brian Heaton
Intrigued by the benefits of moving to the cloud, but uncertain on how to get there? Fear not. A new commission of industry experts on cloud adoption is putting together a guide for state and local governments on how to adopt and implement cloud solutions.
The Commission on the Leadership Opportunity in U.S. Deployment of the Cloud — State and Local Government (CLOUD2/SLG) Commission was launched on Monday, Aug. 29, to provide recommendations on a variety of cloud issues, including procurement practices, delivery of services and deployment.
Formed by the TechAmerica Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on the education of industry executive and policymakers on technology innovation, the commission is accepting nominations for potential members. The foundation previously created a road map for federal agencies to adopt cloud computing.
“The pressures of a struggling economy, reduced budgets and the need for greater efficiency have led state, local and federal governments globally to promote cloud computing as a solution whenever possible,” said Tarkan Maner, president and CEO of Wyse Technology, who will head-up the CLOUD2/SLG Commission, in a statement. “For government agencies at all levels, cloud computing is a concept whose time has come.”
Carol Henton, vice president of state and local government for TechAmerica, said that the foundation is looking to name approximately 30 commissioners to join the leadership team of Maner; Dr. David Cohn, “Smarter Cloud” program director of IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center; and Daniel Kent, public-sector CTO and director of solutions for Cisco.
The commissioners will be selected by Tech America Foundation’s board of directors.
The new commission will have its first in-person meeting on Nov. 5, in Denver in conjunction with the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) annual conference. Henton added that the guide and recommendations on cloud adoption should be wrapped up in December, but cautioned that the deadline are fluid and could be pushed into 2012.
“We don’t want to script this too heavy before we get under way; we want this to be industry driven,” she explained.
Henton said that although nominations to the commission would be accepted from any company, members of state and local governments — particularly those that may have already moved to the cloud — wouldn’t be on the commission itself. Instead, those government officials interested in taking part in the process could ask to serve on an advisory board.
She said Dugan Petty, CIO of Oregon and incoming chairman of NASCIO, has already agreed to be a part of the advisory board.
Why won’t government technology professionals be considered for the commission itself? Henton and Michael Kerr, senior director of state and local government for the TechAmerica Foundation, said they didn’t have an answer to the question. Kerr suggested it could have something to do with the original CLOUD2 Commission.
“I suppose it may have come from the federal side, as there are strong ethics laws between the White House and private industry, and certainly the Obama administration has been rigorous in enforcing those,” Kerr said.
Kerr and Henton were adamant, however, about the importance of governmental participation in the advisory board.
“We do see the public sector board of advisors being one way we can review our recommendations and get perspective from the states and localities without having them do a lot of the heavy lifting,” Kerr maintained. “A couple of reviews by this body would be helpful in steering the outcome.”
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http://www.govtech.com/policy-management/New-Commission-to-Advise-on-Cloud.html
With all due respect, developing a commission to advise local governments on use of the cloud without including local government representation is just plain silly. How can you the organization expect to obtain direct feedback at the local level and how can they expect to develop trust within the very stakeholder group they are designed to advise without providing them with a seat at the full Commission table? Perhaps I misunderstand the quote regarding ethics laws, but I do not understand how loading an advisory commission focused on cloud computing with vendors that offer cloud services and not including government representation is "ethical".
Keeping government representatives that have ALREADY implemented a cloud solution off the commission is a bad idea. These are the folks you need to learn from and the ones to temper the voices of private industry. Industry, while having good intentions, is profit driven. You need those that have experienced the implementation problems to share lessons learned and to help steer the commission to realistic objectives.
I totally agree with the comments of Tom and Bill Greeves. As an elected official at the County government level in a small rural area in Oklahoma, I can say that industry solutions are normally geared to larger entities, and don't often get down to our level. Industry also often has no idea of the real complexities of local government. Local representation would seem to be a must for this to actually work as it seems to be intended.
We need to remember, this commission is less about BMP's and more about business development. There are no government reps on a commission that has private business development (of public sector customers) as its primary objective.
I agree with Dan's comments. This appears to be an industry driven marketing approach packaged in the guise of a standards commission. It's actions will lack credibility. A legitimate commission would have its foundations in the public sector, particularly one of, or a joint enterprise of the public sector organizations.
"Cloud" is, to put it nicely, a type of semantic manipulation. It sounds cool, hip and high tech but what it means is "someone else's server." So when anyone talks about putting their data on the cloud they're saying they're going to hand it over to someone else and take on any risk that goes along with that. Government institutions are not doing enough to protect their data. They're trying to use the private sector approach even though the primary motives for data breaches are different. Control is being handed over without enough trepidation.
I am in complete agreement with Bill Greeves on the need for active, highly inclusive consideration of SLG organizations that have experience with Cloud solutions, best practices and the impact of migration of any off premises services. Many progressive SLG organizations, that made selective choice to move services to the Cloud, have a tremendous understanding of the impacts in the technology, as well as the client impact for such choices. The Cloud has enabled many IT organizations to reactively choose a service to minimize the impact of an immediate need, but even these educated IT leaders rally to colleagues about the pros and cons of these choices before signing on the dotted line. Bottom line, without the benefit of informed SLG members at the top of this advisory group, it becomes more of a best practice / lessons learned event for a marketing campaign rather than a focus on the development of a roadmap for the successfull strategies to select, utilize and maximize the benefit of Cloud solutions and services in government.
I agree in part, the whole 'cloud' computing thing is just hip tags for outsourcing and distributed processing. That has been going on for years. I have been in this business since 1979 and get a chuckle out of some of my younger friends who think this is all something new. I also picked up on the idea that is is little more than a sly (not so covert) way to market the concept.