Budget office announces federal IT reform involving cloud

Monday, November 22, 2010

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget recently announced a plan to overhaul federal IT management strategies, which will require agencies to adopt cloud computing, Datamation reports.

This "cloud-first" policy is designed to improve efficiencies throughout federal agencies and encourage them to consider new technological approaches to handle their infrastructure needs, as well as productivity and collaboration.

"With the default policy towards cloud, what that really moves is behavior toward where agencies are going to provision IT rather than build wherever possible, especially when it comes to commodity IT," said federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra.

The White House is also implementing a set of policies designed to address IT budget, procurement and management issues, Datamation reports.

OMB deputy director Jeffery Zients, who announced the plan, said fixing IT is a crucial step, as projects tend to "run over budget, behind schedule or fail to deliver their promise of functionality."

The federal government represents one of the biggest IT spenders in the world with a fiscal 2011 budget of $79.4 billion, according to InformationWeek.