Government Executive - Authors - Adam Stone

Pushing for Liftoff

Adam Stone — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Last year, when he was federal chief information officer, Vivek Kundra laid out an ambitious strategy for adopting cloud computing across government, calling on agencies to invest a quarter of all information technology spending—$20 billion—in Web-based IT operations.

Considering computing services in the cloud are still relatively new and the public grasp of the concept still hazy, this would appear a tall order. But several agencies have leaped into the fray, deploying cloud-based systems to handle email, collaboration and high volumes of public communications.

These deployments have not been without hurdles. IT leaders have sweated the details of transitioning from legacy systems, while others have finessed the finer points of scaling Web-based products to meet their needs. Some have been challenged to consider turning over major IT operations to third-party providers.

These efforts have proved worthwhile for some, with cloud systems delivering greater efficiencies at lower cost. The following case studies examine cloud transitions at four agencies: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy, the National Archives and Records Administration’s Office of Government Information Services, and the Agriculture Department.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The Setup

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration needed a way to distribute more services to more people.

The agency wanted an email and collaboration tool that would reach its community of 25,000 employees, contractors and associates across the country and around the world, many working on the oceans and in the skies. The ideal solution would provide capabilities such as telework and video chat.

Planners identified cloud-based communications as the smartest option. In January, NOAA announced the completion of its $11.5 million project with Earth Resources Technology Inc., based in Laurel, Md., to unify messaging services. The company linked NOAA’s systems using Google Apps for Government, a suite of Web-based messaging applications, in partnership with Google, Unisys and Tempus Nova Inc.

According to Google Apps deployment manager Kennith Jackson, the six-month deployment was “a remarkable achievement.” But that achievement was not without its hurdles.

The Challenges

Chief among the obstacles was the new system’s calendar feature. Schedules needed to sync up, and that was no small feat, says NOAA Chief Information Officer Joseph F. Klimavicz.

A large percentage of the workforce already was using Google Apps and its calendar function prior to the full system rollout—but not everyone. When the switch was thrown, everyone would have to land on the same calendar system at the same time, something that could not be taken for granted with disparate systems already in play.

Klimavicz put a twofold safeguard in place. He kept the old system running in parallel with the new and backed up existing data on paper. Everyone printed hard copies of their calendars before the changeover. To head off other possible issues, he has been proceeding incrementally. While cloud-based collaboration opens doors to productivity, it also can invite a degree of chaos,
Klimavicz notes. Too much information moving among too many people raises the risk of wires getting crossed.

NOAA has rolled out collaboration tools only to its internal users, holding off on inviting in its external partners until the system has proved manageable. “We want to have a process in place before we fully turn on all the functionality. We don’t want the collaboration to get out of control to the point where it becomes more difficult to find information,” he says.

IT managers have made similar choices through every step of deployment, keeping the new services on a tight rein as staff adjusts to the change.

Video chat functions, for instance, place heavy demands on computing resources. “We’ve got hundreds of facilities across the country, and not all of them have robust bandwidth,” Klimavicz says. “So do we turn on that capability and potentially bring down the network?” His solution has been to launch videoconferencing tools, but also to set configurations that control their use.

Klimavicz puts fundamentals first, making sure nothing moves forward unless email and calendar functions are performing as planned. “I want to make sure the core set of services works. If you try to do too much you are going to dilute your staff. You are going to be trying to respond to too many changes all at once,” he says.

The Results

To appreciate the magnitude of this project, it helps to look at the numbers.

Prior to the switch NOAA used 19 email systems nationwide, each with its own configuration. To complete its conversion to the cloud, the agency had to migrate 36 terabytes of data—150 million email messages—in 25,000 accounts. But system administrators received just 129 requests for help at the time of the changeover.

Preparation made a difference. In the months preceding the change, IT planners sent out informational emails to employees every other week and offered extensive training. The planners also showed a willingness to be flexible, allowing users to continue running the email clients they were accustomed to, such as Outlook and Thunderbird.

Implementation demanded rigorous planning, careful scripting and a lot of contingency thinking. Ultimately, though, it was the wisdom of other IT leaders that helped the NOAA team, according to Klimavicz. “Something like this requires a lot of learning from others, a lot of talking to other people who have done these kinds of things before,” he says.

That research paid off. Klimavicz estimates the agency’s Google Apps implementation cost roughly half the price of an in-house system.

Securities and Exchange Commission Office of Investor Education and Advocacy

The Setup

If Thomas Bayer has been busy, he can thank Bernard Madoff.

Since 2009, after investors lost billions in a Ponzi scheme run by Madoff, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy has been deluged annually with 90,000 tips, complaints and referrals from the public. As SEC chief information officer, Bayer needed to update a decade-old IT system that could not keep up with the pace of data rolling in.

SEC has a workforce of 3,700 in 12 offices across the country in a variety of specialties, including attorneys, accountants, examiners and economists. Bayer faced a special circumstance in his search for a solution. Unlike some federal
agencies that have large information technology divisions, Bayer has about 130 people working in-house. He relies on 1,100 contract employees for the bulk of the agency’s IT services.

It’s not a handicap, he says. Working with contractors gives him the flexibility to move staff power where it’s needed. But the arrangement requires an extra level of coordination in any big deployment.

In this case that deployment involved migrating the Office of Investor Education and Advocacy to Salesforce.com, a Web-based system for interacting with the public. The cloud service gives employees, no matter where they are located, “the ability to take in [queries] from our customers, and to use business process workflow to make sure those questions and inquiries were answered in timely manner,” he says.

The Challenges

Prior to coming to SEC in 2010, Bayer worked at Citibank, where he migrated applications such as credit card processing to a hosted data center. So he had some idea what kinds of snags to anticipate with this project.

He was aware that security would be an issue with any Web-based system, especially at SEC—a virtual stockpile of sensitive financial information.

The CIO knew he would have to make the case for moving to the cloud not only to his internal customers but also the agency’s technologists. Some were likely to balk at the prospect of putting a major migration in the hands of a third party. But he believed the trade-offs in public transparency and response time would far outweigh those concerns, and security controls were getting more sophisticated in the cloud.

It helped that Bayer had been down that road already. “When I came to the SEC I brought with me my experience working with third-party vendors and the knowledge that they were perfectly capable of gearing up,” he says. “You give them a problem, you get them to commit to a schedule, and they will deliver on time and on budget for you.” In his experience, third-party providers have fulfilled the promise of cloud services, taking the heavy lifting off his hands while providing security and reliability.

The Results

The rollout of Salesforce.com took place very much in the public eye, with SEC and the financial institutions it regulates under scrutiny in the wake of high-profile scandals. “There is always a pressure to deliver and just then there was a key thrust for the SEC to get these systems up and working,” Bayer says. “Our own inspector general had pointed out that we needed tips, complaints and referrals capabilities. Members of Congress were stressing that.”

By the time it was completed in mid-2011, the cloud-based system had met those expectations. Costing less than $300,000, the implementation has improved efficiency. Public contacts via email, Web forms, postal mail, fax and phone now are streamlined into a single queue and can be processed electronically. According to SEC’s report, the system has cut the time it takes to resolve cases by up to 75 percent.

“I look at managing technology as a giant business case,” Bayer says. “I want to give the best set of features, the most robust set of features with the highest availability and uptime, at the lowest cost.” And for him that means moving to cloud-based services.

National Archives and Records Administration Office of Government Information Services

The Setup

The federal government archives billions of documents, and the Freedom of Information Act is supposed to guarantee public access to many of them. But getting to them isn’t always easy.

In September 2009, the National Archives and Records Administration set up an office to help citizens access documents through the FOIA process. The Office of Government Information Services, which began with a one-person staff that has now grown to seven, faced an information landslide.

“We knew really early on that we needed a system to handle our caseload—
and we had no idea how big that caseload would be,” says OGIS Director Miriam Nisbet. The small office turned to cloud technology for the scalability needed to manage an unpredictable work flow. From 2009 to 2011, OGIS took on 1,200 cases involving disputes or requests for assistance, but future volume remains uncertain for this relatively new office.

OGIS contracted with technology firm Active Network to build a self-service website for citizens seeking help in resolving FOIA requests. Launched in November 2011, ogis.archives.gov
includes a searchable library of FOIA terms and concepts, an online submission process for those requesting assistance, and the ability to review the status of a case and communicate directly with OGIS staff.

The Challenges nara

Considering the potentially sensitive nature of information passing through the system, Nisbet and the vendor had to home in on just what information from outside sources would be visible on the OGIS website. Requests can run the gamut, from relatives seeking information on long-dead family members, to reporters looking into the federal response to a major oil spill.

In addition, the solution also had to mesh with existing National Archives systems. Planners wanted to ensure that the office would not in the future find itself out of step with any changes in its parent agency’s IT infrastructure.

Finding that an in-house system would exceed OGIS’ technology capacity, planners decided a third-party service provider could resolve these issues more cost-effectively. By going to the cloud, OGIS achieved needed scalability, an adaptable infrastructure to drive the public interface and the flexibility to engage seamlessly with existing National Archives systems. The cloud deployment cost $400,000, which includes $100,000 for ongoing maintenance, and took 15 months to complete. IT planners see potential for much more savings on the operational side. According to researchers at the Brookings Institution, federal agencies are experiencing up to a 50 percent savings by moving to the cloud.

The Results

A key component of the project was not so much the technology itself, but rather its ability to replicate OGIS’ processes in the cloud. “We had to make sure we were able to walk through all the steps we needed, everything that happens from the moment we got a phone call or an email or a letter, to the moment we closed the request. We had to figure out every single step in our process,” says Nisbet, adding that the goal was to incorporate them all into one system.

OGIS’ small IT force worked in close cooperation with the vendor. “As they were building prototypes we would go over them and say, ‘yes, this works’ or ‘no, this doesn’t.’ It was an intensive process,” Nisbet says. “You don’t just say, ‘Here’s a go-kart, could you please turn this into a Cadillac?’ ”

The new site has drawn roughly
35 visitors per day, compared with OGIS’ early site, which attracted about 21 visitors a day.

The original site, a bare-bones affair built on a Microsoft Access database, provided minimal functionality. Nisbet gives credit to the enhanced functionality of working in the cloud. “People can come to the website, and they can open a case through the website,” she says. “That’s new, and that’s really significant.”

Agriculture Department

The Setup

The numbers tell the story at the Agriculture Department: Having 120,000 employees on 29 disparate email systems can make it tough to do business.

Chief Information Officer Chris Smith looked for a cloud-based solution, but couldn’t find anything robust enough to handle USDA’s email demands. So he began by migrating half the employees
to an in-house network built on the Microsoft Exchange platform, paring the total number of email systems to 21.

By 2010, cloud-based technology had matured, and Smith came to believe it could offer better economic justification than Agriculture’s current approach. He signed a $27 million contract with Dell and Microsoft to deliver Microsoft Online Services for email and collaboration across the department.

The Challenges

Having consolidated 60,000 employees onto a Microsoft platform, Smith had a leg up on implementing the new network. Still, the scope of the project paired with the complexity of legacy systems presented challenges. “It’s everything. It’s the environment on the desktop where the end user accesses the system. It’s the network that this rides on. It’s a new service provider,” Smith says. “And then you have to have a workable concept of operation. Even in the cloud you still need to have a Level 1, 2 and 3 help desk. You have to make sure that all those things work.”

Beyond any particular technical solution, Smith relied on in-house expertise. “USDA has a very mature project management capability and IT staff, so when we saw hurdles we had the forethought and experience to identify those,” he says.

The Results

As the rollout began, planners met weekly and broadcast regular updates to employees. Deployment required a willingness to shift on the fly, and the team reshaped the plan to accommodate necessities such as mobile devices. “We realized that one of the best things we could do was to take an offering that we had for 40,000 people and stand that up as an enterprise service so that anyone with a smartphone would be able to connect through that,” Smith says.

There have been big wins. Email capacity has grown from 250 megabyte inboxes to 5 gigabytes. The unified system enhances communications and team work with access to live chat, Web meetings and other collaboration tools. And the average cost per mailbox has dropped from $150 to less than $100. “I can’t put a number on all that in terms of savings,” Smith says. “But clearly it’s a big improvement.”

Adam Stone, a freelance journalist based in Annapolis, Md., writes about federal management issues, technology and business.

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Ramping Down

Adam Stone — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0500

The Big Picture The Energy Department's effort comes in the context of a governmentwide data center consolidation program, prompted in part by the explosive growth of such facilities. The number of federal data centers grew from 432 in 1998 to more than 2,000 today. In February 2010, the Office of Management and Budget launched the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, calling on agencies to take a hard look at energy consumption among their facilities with an eye toward closing 800 centers by 2015. Technology leaders are expected to: --Reduce the energy and real estate footprint of government data centers. -- Cut the cost of data center hardware, software and operations. --Shift IT investments to more efficient computing platforms. In October, OMB changed its data center definition, boosting the overall total and the number expected to close. Despite its specificity, the OMB directive has been met with ambivalence, according to MeriTalk, an online community of government information technology specialists. In its most recent survey, the "2010 Federal Data Center Demolition Derby," MeriTalk reported mixed reviews. While 63 percent of federal IT executives are confident that consolidation will happen, three-fourths of respondents say it won't happen on time, according to the survey. Twelve percent think data center reduction won't happen at all. While more efficient computing is a chief goal of the initiative, 62 percent say it will take them up to five years to shift operations to Web-based cloud services. None of the respondents could agree on how many data centers would be left standing: Guesses ranged from 300 to 900 centers. Lockheed Martin officials are a bit more sanguine, at least about the Energy Department's project. They expect significant results, assuming the agency and contractor can work together effectively. All Hands on Deck A thorough data center assessment is a two-way street between federal managers and contractors. "What we need from the government is participation and engagement in the project-development process. We can only make recommendations based on our understanding of government priorities, and, of course, the universe of possibilities the engineers make available to us," says Greg Caplan, Lockheed Martin's senior manager for energy performance contracting. A data center consolidation program involves a range of stakeholders, including budget staff, energy management specialists and program personnel in the CIO's office. As agencies embark on these ventures they'll have to unravel a complex web of relationships among those who make the policy, those who pay the bills and, especially, those who manage the assets. "The people whose buy-in is most import are the people who manage the facilities," Caplan says. A federal energy-savings performance contract has two distinct advantages. There's no upfront cost to the agency, and the final scope of work is determined not solely by the agency, as is usually the case, but rather in close cooperation with the company doing the job. But the timeline on such a contract can be problematic. OMB's consolidation program looks for an agency to recoup expenses through energy savings over a 25-year period. That's easy when the target is a turbine, for instance, says Wooley at Energy. Hard assets often have a lifespan of decades. But it is different in IT, where whole paradigms sometimes turn over in the course of just a few years. Typically, "we are not going to fund an IT upgrade 20 years out," he says. "I don't think the IT folks have been made aware of that idea. We are just used to our incremental enhancements year by year." Consolidating data centers will require agencies to make many assumptions about their long-term needs and the changing state of technology. The ultimate goal for OMB is energy savings--enough to pay for consolidation efforts in the long run. But Wooley's vision goes beyond the bottom line on the utilities bill. He's looking to improve IT services throughout the department, a move that should benefit all users. A streamlined network could support desktop video, mobile computing and cloud computing applications. "It will allow us to take a much bigger step toward improving our IT infrastructure," Wooley says. "We want to be able to operate a highly efficient IT structure, and we want to be able to stop the significant costs of being able to do that." Adam Stone, a freelance journalist based in Annapolis, Md., writes about federal management issues, technology and a broad range of business topics. ]]>

Ramping Down

Adam Stone — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0400

The Energy Department taps outside assessment of long-range IT needs to decide which data centers to close.

To meet governmentwide goals for streamlining computing operations, the Energy Department is using a novel procurement tool to whittle down its 89 data centers-federal energy savings performance contracts.

It's not that these contracts are new. They have been used for everything from Air Force water conservation projects to energy-efficient lighting for the Statue of Liberty. But they have not been used to reach sustainability goals specifically through improved information technology practices.

"ESPCs in the past have been something the facilities managers and energy managers have been aware of, but this is the first time in IT," says Jake Wooley, deputy director of the Energy Department's information technology management office. "We're calling it a proof of concept."

The department has enlisted Lockheed Martin Corp. to provide that proof. Under the terms of the contract, the company will offer an in-depth preliminary investigation to demonstrate where Energy can save money, and how much, through a data center consolidation.

The assessment, which was slated to be released in October, was done at no cost to Energy. The department and Lockheed Martin will work up a project agreement based on the assessment. Only then will the money begin to flow. There are any number of unknowns in this consolidation effort.

How far will it reach? At the very least, agency executives are eyeing data facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and at headquarters in Washington for possible closure. But it remains to be seen which data centers can be consolidated to drive long-term cost savings.

Other questions include how many employees a consolidation could affect, how much energy might be conserved, and how much money can be saved to offset the costs.

The Big Picture

The Energy Department's effort comes in the context of a governmentwide data center consolidation program, prompted in part by the explosive growth of such facilities. The number of federal data centers grew from 432 in 1998 to more than 2,000 today.

In February 2010, the Office of Management and Budget launched the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, calling on agencies to take a hard look at energy consumption among their facilities with an eye toward closing 800 centers by 2015. Technology leaders are expected to:

Reduce the energy and real estate footprint of government data centers.
Cut the cost of data center hardware, software and operations.
Shift IT investments to more efficient computing platforms.

In October, OMB changed its data center definition, boosting the overall total and the number expected to close. Despite its specificity, the OMB directive has been met with ambivalence, according to MeriTalk, an online community of government information technology specialists. In its most recent survey, the "2010 Federal Data Center Demolition Derby," MeriTalk reported mixed reviews.

While 63 percent of federal IT executives are confident that consolidation will happen, three-fourths of respondents say it won't happen on time, according to the survey. Twelve percent think data center reduction won't happen at all. While more efficient computing is a chief goal of the initiative, 62 percent say it will take them up to five years to shift operations to Web-based cloud services. None of the respondents could agree on how many data centers would be left standing: Guesses ranged from 300 to 900 centers.

Lockheed Martin officials are a bit more sanguine, at least about the Energy Department's project. They expect significant results, assuming the agency and contractor can work together effectively.

All Hands on Deck

A thorough data center assessment is a two-way street between federal managers and contractors.

"What we need from the government is participation and engagement in the project-development process. We can only make recommendations based on our understanding of government priorities, and, of course, the universe of possibilities the engineers make available to us," says Greg Caplan, Lockheed Martin's senior manager for energy performance contracting.

A data center consolidation program involves a range of stakeholders, including budget staff, energy management specialists and program personnel in the CIO's office. As agencies embark on these ventures they'll have to unravel a complex web of relationships among those who make the policy, those who pay the bills and, especially, those who manage the assets.

"The people whose buy-in is most import are the people who manage the facilities," Caplan says.

A federal energy-savings performance contract has two distinct advantages. There's no upfront cost to the agency, and the final scope of work is determined not solely by the agency, as is usually the case, but rather in close cooperation with the company doing the job.

But the timeline on such a contract can be problematic.

OMB's consolidation program looks for an agency to recoup expenses through energy savings over a 25-year period. That's easy when the target is a turbine, for instance, says Wooley at Energy. Hard assets often have a lifespan of decades.

But it is different in IT, where whole paradigms sometimes turn over in the course of just a few years. Typically, "we are not going to fund an IT upgrade 20 years out," he says. "I don't think the IT folks have been made aware of that idea. We are just used to our incremental enhancements year by year."

Consolidating data centers will require agencies to make many assumptions about their long-term needs and the changing state of technology.

The ultimate goal for OMB is energy savings-enough to pay for consolidation efforts in the long run. But Wooley's vision goes beyond the bottom line on the utilities bill. He's looking to improve IT services throughout the department, a move that should benefit all users.

A streamlined network could support desktop video, mobile computing and cloud computing applications. "It will allow us to take a much bigger step toward improving our IT infrastructure," Wooley says. "We want to be able to operate a highly efficient IT structure, and we want to be able to stop the significant costs of being able to do that."

Adam Stone, a freelance journalist based in Annapolis, Md., writes about federal management issues, technology and a broad range of business topics.

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Down to a Science

Adam Stone — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400

From nanotech to biotech, R&D funding reaches beyond agency missions.

Quick: Name a federal agency whose research could boost milk production, wean consumers off gasoline and perhaps even bring peace to the Middle East.

If you guessed the Agriculture Department, you'd be right. The department's research into new technologies can drive those results and more. Diverse as it might seem, the breadth of Agriculture's R&D program should not be too surprising. Across the board, agencies pursue research projects that have implications beyond their scope.

Some R&D programs target specific agency missions, while others tackle basic science, the big questions whose answers might not have immediate practical implications. By and large, both types of programs remain strong, even in the face of budget cuts.

In 2010, the total nondefense R&D budget was $64 billion. While the April continuing resolution trimmed $38.5 billion from the federal budget, agencies with the most active research programs largely were spared, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In 2011, the National Institutes of Health's overall budget will take a 0.8 percent cut. The National Science Foundation will lose 1 percent of its funding, and the Energy Department's Office of Science will be trimmed 0.4 percent, according to AAAS.

Politics do play a role in keeping research-intensive agencies strong. "Basically, both the left and the right like science," says Jesse Ausubel, a Rockefeller University professor who served on the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government from 1988 to 1993.

"There may be some difference in emphasis-some may like environmental research, others may like aerospace research-but there isn't one party that is for research and another that is against it. Basically, everyone is for it," Ausubel says.

Practical Projects

The bulk of research funding goes to the Defense Department. In 2010, military R&D programs received $84 billion, money it spent on weapons development, radiation drugs, malaria vaccines, magnetic rail guns and weather data systems. At civilian agencies, research and development casts an even wider net. Take Agriculture for example. Mapping the cattle genome to increase milk production: Makes sense. Mideast peace? Less obvious.

The tie-in stems from research into the plant disease Ug99, which destroys wheat crops. "Wheat is a staple in the diets in the Middle East," says Cathie Woteki, undersecretary for research, education and economics. "Through the research, we have been able to develop a strain of wheat that is resistant to Ug99." By shipping hundreds of tons of the stuff to Afghanistan, Woteki anticipates more food will mean less unrest in the region. "Over the long term we hope this will have the payoff of providing better stability in that country," she says.

Woteki's division will receive $2.9 billion in 2011. That money will support research into crop protection, environmental stewardship and food production. Some $220 million will go to biotechnology projects.

As with many agencies, the phrase "mission driven" underlies Woteki's efforts. "This is research for people," she says. "Most people when they think about USDA they think it is all going for farmers. But this is research that affects every consumer. You see it in low food prices: We spend less than 10 percent of our income on food, which is the lowest in the world."

At the Environmental Protection Agency, some scientists have set their sights on smaller targets, literally. They are trying to determine whether nanotechnology-the development of materials on the atomic and molecular scale-eventually could poison consumers. Typically nanotech is used to make products smaller, stronger, more efficient or less expensive to produce. There's nanotech in diesel fuel, some manufacturers weave it into textiles, other applications can screen for bacteria in food, while some scientists are using nanotech to develop more efficient household cleaning products.

With its exceptional ability to transport and store energy, nanotechnology will make a coming generation of car batteries remarkably efficient, but Jeff Morris wants to know whether they will be safe. As EPA's national program director for nanotechnology, Morris is working with industry groups and trade associations to understand what the tiny widgets will do when they hit the landfill.

Morris and his team conduct their investigations mostly using computers, partly because laboratory and field research costs more. The government spends more than $100 million a year on the environmental health and safety implications of nanotechnology, of which EPA gets $20 million. His work on batteries gets about $500,000.

Still, federal research funds are limited, which makes industry partnerships especially important. "The aim of our research really is to develop guidance that the people who make the stuff can then use," Morris says. "Our job is to develop models that they can use when they design these products and then take them into the factory."

Into the Abstract

Practical science at Agriculture and EPA aims to fulfill functional goals, as does military R&D, but that is only part of the equation. Much of federal research is basic science, whose relevance isn't always understood or well-accepted among the broad population. Science in general may be apolitical, but the notion of basic science and its significance can be hard to convey.

In a 2008 policy speech, Sarah Palin lambasted government-funded fruit fly research as a frivolous earmark. That research has led to discoveries that could advance treatments for Alzheimer's disease and autism, but some question the value of pure science.

Brad Keister would know. He is program director for nuclear physics in NSF's Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate. In addition to overseeing the program he also pursues his own research, exploring connections between relativity and quantum mechanics in systems with a small number of particles. Some might say: So what? It's a question Keister has heard before, and his answer goes to the heart of why pure science matters.

"This is part of the world we live in, it is basic stuff, and we would like to know how it behaves," Keister says. "These are the kinds of questions that as curious people we want to know." Sometimes basic research also can have unexpected payoffs. The researcher at Bell Labs who developed lasers in the 1950s surely never dreamed we'd be pointing them at our eyes to correct vision. Whether research is pure or applied, driven by mission or mere curiosity, federal executives stand to gain from the R&D programs within their agencies.

"Part of what you are buying with your R&D budget is access to a clever group of people," Rockefeller University's Ausubel says. "You are getting a kind of brain trust, people you can consult with who have specialized knowledge. So if an oil spill or an earthquake occurs, you can be speaking to somebody who actually has useful, specialized knowledge with just one or two phone calls."

Adam Stone, a freelance journalist based in Annapolis, Md., writes about federal management issues, technology and a broad range of business topics.

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Soft Landings

Adam Stone — Sun, 01 May 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Agencies concerned about sensitive data take incremental steps into the cloud.

Is it possible to walk on the clouds while keeping one foot on the ground? Yes, and sometimes it's preferable too.

As federal agencies move ahead to fulfill President Obama's call for a broader embrace of Internet-based technology operations, some are reluctant to entrust their data and their systems to the cloud entirely. Perhaps some processes are best kept closer to home.

Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra says so. In a May 2010 report he described a Colorado state effort to implement a hybrid cloud using a private cloud, an enterprise computing architecture protected by a firewall, for highly secure data; an internal network for archival storage; and a public cloud where vendors can offer Internet-based applications and services.

Kundra paints a picture of a system in which disparate elements find their homes in and out of the public cloud.

Leading cloud vendors acknowledge this blended scenario can be desirable. Despite all the cloud accomplishments of Google, for example, it still can't replace an agency's finance systems. Given such limitations, "there will be no agency that has a total cloud environment across their entire IT infrastructure," says David Mihalchik, Google Federal business development manager.

Public vs. Private

Why take to the cloud incrementally? At the Federal Communications Commission, it has been largely a matter of prudence. Small steps mean small mistakes, if any. "Otherwise, if you just move it all from here to there, you are just going to move the problem from here to there," says FCC's Managing Director Steven VanRoekel.

FCC is deep into reengineering its website-not simply a surface remake but an architectural overhaul. As part of that effort the agency has contracted with managed services provider Terremark to take all public-facing elements into the cloud. Many agree Web pages, videos, photos and downloadable content can be managed efficiently and cost-effectively in the cloud. Transactional data such as licensing and public comments will stay in house, partly because any change to these processes would require a commission vote, but also because FCC wants to move with caution into the new technology. "The big thing here is getting the architecture right, to future-proof it," VanRoekel says. "Being able to move in this incremental way means we can take our time really getting the architecture right. We can set ourselves up for long-term success."

Moving public-facing elements to the cloud first makes sense to Mark White, chief technology officer for the U.S. federal practice at Deloitte Consulting. According to White, front-end applications can stand alone, whereas deeply integrated functions likely will have to remain housed together. "Integrated financials, manufacturing, inventory, logistics and supply chain will continue to have a strong business case for on-premise, in-house operation and integration," he says.

While architectural concerns help drive decisions about cloud implementation, two other elements of equal concern are cost and security. Cloud deployments often save money, but not always. Certainly the cloud is secure, but by whose standard?

As Census Bureau CIO Brian McGrath ponders security in the cloud, he is treading with care, opting for a private cloud solution to manage sensitive census data, as well as highly confidential information that will flow from the 2012 economic census.

At the same time he sees financial benefits in the public cloud. In the most recent census it made fiscal sense for the bureau to shift customer relationship management applications, email blasts and blogging to the public cloud using primarily Akamai Technologies, a Web-based content distribution provider. The speed, scalability and economies of scale in the public cloud make financial sense in these areas.

McGrath describes the economics of public versus private cloud not only in terms of cost, but also overall maturity of the technology. Consider this: Any government agency that is first to sign on with a cloud vendor must ensure the vendor is certified with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. That's a lengthy and expensive process, and McGrath does not want to carry the ball. Rather, he says, it often makes the most sense to keep some elements private until a public cloud vendor that already has crossed the NIST threshold emerges.

Sometimes, too, an incremental solution can come when an agency parcels out one element of a system to a cloud vendor while handing off related functions to another that is more closely tied to the agency's internal systems.

When the Transportation Department launched the Cash for Clunkers program, for example, it immediately was saddled with vast amounts of data and transactions.

The department had to create integrated systems between itself and the thousands of car dealerships participating in the rebate offers to consumers who traded in their old cars for gas-efficient ones. Terremark offered the needed scale and speed, but Transportation determined that monitoring and security should be verified by another vendor, one outside the cloud provider's own infrastructure.

The department crafted a two-part solution. While Terremark crunched the big data via the cloud, vendor Layer 7 Technologies installed government-furnished equipment at the Terremark site, within Transportation's architecture. In this way, department staff and systems outside the cloud were able to monitor and verify the security of activities inside the cloud.

Hybrid Hurdles

There are any number of reasons for making a gradual ascent into the cloud. It's a way to cut costs of routine functions while keeping mission-critical systems in house. Hybrid systems also add a level of security on top of what cloud providers offer. These solutions can provide a means to keep integrated systems bound tightly, while spinning off functions that can operate independently. At the same time, a hybrid system offers one significant potential hurdle.

Running parallel systems can double the operating cost or complexity, potentially erasing the cloud's financial and efficiency gains.

At Census, McGrath has some concerns about this, but he is confident vendors will come through with products that allow users to transition smoothly between their private and public cloud structures. "The tools are in the early stages, but given the push for cloud, I think those tools can and will mature very rapidly," he says.

That's the promise Mihalchik at Google Federal is making, saying interoperability is at the top of the company's cloud to-do list. "We think it is very important, and our engineering team is focused on making sure our cloud platform has those capabilities," he says.

As cloud technologies mature, the ability to bridge legacy systems will be a crucial factor in allowing IT managers to build dynamic, cost-effective hybrids. That way agencies can leverage the speed, savings and scalability of the cloud while still keeping vital processes safe within their walls.

Adam Stone, a freelance journalist based in Annapolis, Md., writes about federal management issues, technology and a broad range of business topics.

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Pay As You Go

Adam Stone — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Budgeting for cloud computing services on demand is a whole new ball game.

There are distinct hurdles on the path to cloud computing: adoption of new technology and migration from existing platforms, for example. One element, though, seems to be straightforward enough-licensing. Federal agencies used to buy; now they're going to rent. How hard is that?

"It looks like it should be easier," says Mark Day, chief technology officer at the Housing and Urban Development Department. "But we haven't tested it yet. We haven't proved it to be easier." In fact, federal executives have serious concerns about cloud licensing, despite President Obama's initiative urging agencies to adopt Internet-based technology services. The cloud model provides computing on demand, which is billed as needed, rather than purchased as a packaged product. That's a dramatic shift from traditional licensing and it requires a new way of thinking.

"There is going to be a cultural change," Day says. "We need to discover best practices around this. There will have to be some lessons learned as a community." The change begins with the fiscal implications of pay-as-you-go licensing, says Darren B. Ash, chief information officer at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. If agencies can't allot a single lump sum for software, then "you've got to have a strong model to be able to estimate how much you need to budget," he says.

That estimate should factor in predicted usage, not just next month but years down the road, as well as short-term spikes in demand.

Cloud licenses also must include new metrics for success. In traditional licensing, the service level agreement mattered: There had to be a clause covering performance. Now performance is the product and service is nine-tenths of the game, so that agreement requires a whole new level of care and feeding.

At Microsoft Corp., Jim Miller, director of the public sector business desk, says the company's federal clients are paying close attention to this issue. "What differentiates the cloud is the uptime, the archiving, the data at rest, the cross state boundary considerations," he says. "[Agencies] are going through the SLAs with a fine-toothed comb. They have many sets of eyes on them making sure they are asking the right questions."

But fine-tuning service level agreements assumes agencies know how to draw up a cloud license. That might be tricky for a number of reasons, according to Daryl Plummer, a managing vice president and chief fellow at the research firm Gartner Inc.

No. 1: Can you buy it? "A lot of the companies the government is working with are on the purchasing schedules for 'products' but not for 'services,' " Plummer says. "So, do I just go and buy this service, calling it a product? Or do I have to buy it as a service? And if it is a service, how does that change what I can or cannot do" in the license?"

No. 2: How do you buy it? If agencies are paying for a service, rather than a product, "it means you can't buy it out of your capital budget," Plummer says. "You've got to buy it out of your operating budget. But how do you depreciate that? How do you amortize that? Is it something that changes your books, something that changes how you report the numbers?"

Then there is the multiplicity of license models in play as agencies migrate from traditional to cloud computing. With multiple formats running simultaneously, multiple charges become a possibility. A traditional license might have set certain payments already, while an overlapping cloud license simultaneously charges for the same software, even from the same vendor.

"You have to pay for the same product twice, based simply on how you are using it," says Bruce Hart, chief operating officer of Miami-based cloud infrastructure provider Terremark Federal, which serves about 50 agencies.

To dodge that bullet, Hart recommends aiming for critical mass. Federal executives should think about licensing cloud products not on the departmental level, but at the agency level. With agency-scale buying power, "they can be demanding a different approach from those service providers," he notes. "They ought to be allowed to have a license that applies both to their physical stuff and their virtual stuff."

NRC's Ash says the licensing issues that keep him up at night have to do with data ownership. A cloud service provider will have its hands all over a customer's data. That's part of the win, after all: the vendor's ability to manage not just the software but also the data driving an application's use.

Should the vendor and customer part ways, however, a sloppy license might leave critical data behind in the cloud, Ash says, "and I don't want to put us in that situation."

Adam Stone, a freelance journalist based in Annapolis, Md., writes about federal management issues, technology and a broad range of business topics.

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