For those who came in late, ACT-IAC, http://www.actgov.org/Pages/default.aspx, one of the larger organizations enabling Government and Industry IT to be able to informally interact and learn from each other, holds an Executive Leadership Conference, ELC, each year.
This year ELC is being held October 25-27 in Williamsburg, VA, http://www.actgov.org/events/ExecutiveLeadership/ELC%202009/Pages/default.aspx.
On Monday, October 26, most of the day is taken up by panels organized into four tracks. I had the privilege to chair along with Eric Won of GSA, one of the tracks focused on Infrastructure and Cloud Computing.
This post will provide an overview of what we intended to accomplish during the course of the track and thus why we made the decisions we made in creating the panels. My discussion at the beginning of the track will in large part echo what I write here, subject to any suggestions made by my vast reading audience.
WHAT IS IT, WHO CARES. There has been a lot of publicity and discussion already about Cloud Computing, what it is, what it isn’t, even if it is or not. As someone once pointed out to me, we went through the Industrial Revolution which was not well-defined at the time and it still happened. The reality is that NIST has created a pretty good working definition which I like (and more importantly GSA likes; a link to version 1.5 can be found here http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/index.html, it has been given a high-priority by the current Administration, and many pilots are in process or soon to begin.
We decided to deal with four issues:
- How will this affect what is currently in-place and operational
- What are the institutional hurdles that will need to be dealt with to make success, however we define success, more likely
- How will the classical Government oversight functions measure cloud implementations
- What lessons learned are already available based on real-world examples
INTRODUCTION. In addition to these subjects, we felt that there were still a significant number of people who have never actually seen how easy it is to instantiate a server based in a cloud (which is easier than porting an already running application to a cloud). Therefore during the introduction we will use an environment that JPL, one of the panelists from the Real-World Examples panel (panel 4), has in place and instantiate two servers.
Dave Wennergren, the DoD Deputy CIO, and I will be providing an overview of the day. I will focus on the logistics and panel details. Dave will give an overview of his take on cloud computing in the Government.
PANEL 1, SHARED SERVICES, LOBS, AND MOVING TO THE CLOUD. Who can remember that long-ago time when the focus was creating shared services that would provide relatively centralized provisioning of capabilities to the Federal Government. Oh, right, that was 2008.
In reality as the current Administration has said the cloud journey is, in fact, that, a journey. And it is a journey that will take some time to travel along.
Where are the current Lines of Business focused right now, what is their thinking about the next few years for their offerings, and how are they thinking about cloud computing?
John Marshall, the Vice President, of the CGI Global Sector is moderating a panel with Doug Bourgeois, Director of the National Business Center, one of the most successful government shared operations, Adam Goldberg, Chief, Financial Analysis and Systems Branch, Office of Federal Financial Management, OMB, Mike Hill, VP, Enterprise Initiatives, IBM, and Jim Williams, Commissioner, Federal Acquisition Service, GSA.
PANEL 2, CXO PANEL, HURDLES & OPPORTUNITIES. This and panel 3 are very exciting for me, since we were able to have a significant number of non-IT functions represented. One of the values of ELC is the opportunity to reach outside of our ‘normal’ space.
The panel looks at the kinds of issues that are associated with cloud computing implementation. Having been lucky enough to be part of some of the planning discussions, I can honestly say that if the actual panel is as informative and stimulating as those conversations, it will be very enjoyable and interesting.
The panel is moderated by Casey Coleman, the GSA CIO, and the designated focal point for Cloud Computing for the Federal Government and includes Tom Sharpe, Senior Procurement Executive, Department of the Treasury, Susan Swart, the CIO of the Department of State, Patti Titus, CISO for Unisys Federal Systems and a former CISO at DHS, and Kathleen Turco, CFO for GSA.
PANEL 3, OVERSIGHT. Federal CIO’s get much help and advice when implementing the many regulatory and legal requirements associated with their job responsibilities. How they are measured by these various oversight functions impacts CIO behavior more than many people realize. We have put together on this panel many of the functions that provide internal, program office, or external oversight to discuss how they are thinking of approaching cloud implementations.
The panel is moderated by Mary Ellen Condon, Principal, Assurance & Resilance, Booz Allen Hamilton, Rebecca Leng, Inspector General’s office, Department of Transportation, Ron Ross, Project Leader, Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) Implementation Project, NIST, Greg Silshusen, Director, Information Security Issues, GAO, and Gary Winkler, Program Executive Officer, Enterprise Information Systems, Department of the Army.
PANEL 4, REAL-WORLD EXAMPLES. Images of locking the panelists in a house until they instantiate large applications in the cloud, with the audience voting one panelist off each week have popped up more often in the last few weeks leading to ELC; perhaps lack of sleep has this impact.
The goal of this panel is to look at actual experiences that the panelists have encountered and to look at some of the early lessons learned.
The moderator for the panel is Pete Tseronis, the Dputy Associate CIO, Department of Energy and Chair of the Cloud Advisory Council reporting to Casey Coleman. The panelists include Henry Sienkiewicz, Technical Program Director for DISA, Tom Soderstrom, CTO, for NASA JPL, Susie Adams, CTO, Microsoft, and Pieter Poll, CTO, Qwest.