The TechAmerica Foundation today hosted an event featuring Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom and Technology Agency Secretary Carlos Ramos and bringing together leaders of private technology industry for the release of a major report that outlines government adoption of cloud computing.
The Foundation explained the report, with recommendations from the State and Local Government Cloud Commission, as a roadmap for better collaboration between government and private industry. The Foundation also released the State and Local Government Cloud Commission Community Portal, a website designed to share cloud information for state and local government. The site, www.cloud4slg.org, provides information and guidelines for governments learning about and considering cloud computing.
Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, who headlined today’s release event in Mountain View, said that a new digital divide exists between government, the private sector and the public. Addressing shortcomings and adopting innovative solutions will help bridge that gap, he said in an interview with Techwire.net.
Gavin Newsom Photo: Kimberly White/Getty Images/iStock
"I don’t know another more important issue for government to reconcile in a time of austerity than our ability to utilize technology at scale to dramatically reduce costs and improve services and collaboration and engagement with not only the public but within government itself," Newsom said. "I’m very intense in my desire to see local, county, state and federal government reconcile the world around it as it relates to technology and begin to adapt and adopt these same tools that not only are business and industry adopting but also our constituency as well directly."
Newsom said today’s conference highlighted the divide and allowed businesses and government to share successes and struggles. In California, the state still works with legacy systems from the 1970s; cloud computing systems can provide more efficient, cost effective and environment friendly solutions.
"The bottom line is [cloud computing is] a shared model, it’s shared services, it’s pay as you go, it’s a subscription model as opposed to a licensing model," he said. "If you don’t like it you can stop your subscription, unlike the old procurements that were multi-year and you always had to invest heavily in the next model. The cloud dramatically reduces costs, dramatically increases efficiency, provides a framework of collaboration, [and] provides a framework or platform for engagement with the same tools that so many of our constituents are engaged in every day with their mobile devices&hellipIt’s meeting our constituents where they already are and it’s provided a framework for collaboration at a significantly reduced cost."
California Technology Agency Secretary Carlos Ramos sat on a panel with industry and government leaders moderated by Wyse Technology President and CEO Tarkan Maner. Ramos said that the state has addressed infrastructure through cloud computing and offered new email services and procurement, case management and project and portfolio management through cloud solutions.
"The pressure on budgets has also forced departments in our agencies to start looking at infrastructure through the cloud, so we moved very aggressively into the virtualization space where we’re leveraging VMware, Citrix to virtualize not only infrastructure services, storage, data and other network services to provide that as a cloud service to state agencies," Ramos said.
The Commission’s report released at today’s event advises government by recommending that major technical issues be considered first, followed by utilization of a four-stage management structure for transition to cloud, and lastly suggests best practices for procuring cloud solutions. The report also suggests RFPs unique to cloud computing.
The full State and Local Government Cloud Commission report can be viewed here: http://www.techamericafoundation.org/slg-cc-download.
