DHS jumpstarts GSA’s apps.gov IaaS BPA holders
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released a draft request for quotation (RFQ), HSHQDC-11-Q-00173, supporting the update and overhaul of DHS’s public web properties. In order to consolidate and update these properties, DHS is competeing this requirement among the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) public cloud blanket purchase agreement (BPA) holders on General Service Administration’s (GSA) apps.gov portal.
DHS is looking to the cloud providers to deliver the development, staging, and production web environments… but there’s a catch. The production environment cannot go live until they have both the GSA Authority to Operate (ATO) and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Joint Authorization Board (JAB) ATO. This is particularly challenging since the FedRAMP isn’t quite ready for primetime. The good news is that the awardee will have 120 days to become compliant once the FedRAMP has officially been released.
All FedRAMP delivery dates aside, this is an excellent example of the kinds of public cloud services that government should be considering… especially if the agency in question has little or no experience with public cloud services.
I am often asked how agencies can comply with the OMB’s “Cloud First” policy and 3 services in 18 months challenge. Public facing web properties and datasets are a great first step. Much of the technology is either the same or similar from a developer and content manager perspective. At the same time, we’re not usually talking about life- or mission-critical services.
Furthermore, moving web services to a public cloud is a good environment to work out some of the new skills needed to operate in the cloud such as understanding the nuances of Service Level Agreement (SLA) driven services and how to put your own service level monitoring tools in place (hint: don’t rely on the provider to monitor and report the metrics back to you, as in many cases, there is only a breach if you are actually aware of it). You may also want to take a look at application monitoring and management tools that are needed, not to mention the administrative skills, tools, processes and procedures if you are managing the actual virtual machines on which your web services are being hosted. Finally, it gives additional experience of managing risk and security in a multi-tenant environment.
I have to know, though… does DHS get double credit toward the 3 services in 18 months assignment for putting out their web property in the cloud and using Akamai… another cloud service accelerator/provider?
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