Government Puts Cloud Roadmap Up for Review

The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued the first draft of its roadmap for getting federal agencies in the cloud, support the private sector and generally follow through with the policies that Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel announced in late October 2011.

The final version of the U.S. Government Cloud Computing Roadmap will be released in three volumes: High-Priority Requirements to Further USG Agency Cloud Computing Adoption, Useful Information for Cloud Adopters and Technical Considerations for USG Cloud Computing Deployment Decisions. 

That first volume is the high-level overview of the cloud migration project and its priorities. According to NIST’s press release, the general themes are:

I just want to highlight that mention of “prioritized interoperability, portability and security requirements.” Like many private sector customers, the U.S. Government is obviously concerned about wide-reaching industry problems such as vendor lock-in. I wonder if VanRoekel has any plans to publicly support the OpenStack project.

That second volume is aimed at promoting best practices when moving to the cloud or developing cloud services, no matter who you are. In other words, it’s going to be Uncle Sam’s very own cloud migration guide. The third volume isn’t done yet, but when it’s complete, it will be a guide for decision-makers, rather than IT pros, on what they’re getting themselves into with the cloud.

The first two volumes and the working version of the third have undergone plenty of review already, with academics, private-sector cloud service provider experts and federal IT pros all giving feedback in formalized committees. But now they need your feedback.

Download the U.S. Government Cloud Computing Roadmap in its current form here and give it a read. Up until Dec. 2, 2011, at 5 p.m. Eastern, NIST will accept and take into consideration comments e-mailed to them here. If you do submit feedback, don’t be shy — TalkinCloud would love to hear your thoughts, too.