US Launches Cloud Smart Program to Refresh Government Operations

The U.S. Federal Government has published a new approach to Cloud Computing in a recent document. The plan is a fulfillment of Executive Order 13800~1, and the 2017 Report to the President on Federal IT Modernization, the Office of Management and Budget has developed a new strategy to accelerate agency adoption of cloud-based solutions: Cloud Smart.

The document says that Cloud Smart is meant to equip agencies with actionable information and recommendations from public and private sector use cases. Cloud Smart is designed to offer practical implementation guidance for Government missions to leverage cloud-based technologies.

The new strategy reportedly is founded on three pillars of cloud adoption: security, procurement, and workforce. Collectively, the government says that these elements embody the interdisciplinary approach to IT modernization that the Federal enterprise needs in order to provide improved return on its investments, enhanced security, and higher quality services to the American people.

The Chief Information Officers Council (CIO Council) has developed a list of action items to execute the Cloud Smart strategy, according to the document, and these actions will constitute a work plan aimed at creating and updating programs, policies, and resources that the whole of Government will use to advance the Cloud Smart agenda.

Now that the policy is in effect, all Federal agencies are directed to rationalize their application portfolios to drive Federal cloud adoption. The rationalization process reportedly will involve reducing an application portfolio by 1) assessing the need for and usage of applications; and 2) discarding obsolete, redundant, or overly resource-intensive applications. Decreased application management responsibilities will free agencies to focus on improving service delivery by optimizing their remaining applications.

The initial Cloud Smart work plan will be executed over an eighteen-month period, its actions will be refreshed continuously as needed to keep up with the changing cloud market and emerging technologies, the administration said.