BasicGov / BLOG

State Governments Anticipate Replacing or Installing Software

Good news for BasicGov to hear that 36% of IT decision-makers in state government anticipate an increase in their IT budgets in the next six months, up 2% since June. And even better news for BasicGov, 75% of IT decision makers at state government organizations anticipate replacing or installing software in the next six months. (sources Govtech, CDW).

IT and Cloud Computing

A Gartner survey indicates IT budgets are including cloud computing (39% of respondents).  This survey, Cloud-Computing Budgets Are Growing and Shifting, was conducted between April and July among 1,587 IT budget management professionals in 40 countries with 484 respondents. (source: ITPro)

Earlier this year, Federal Chief Information Security Office Vivek Kundra put out a report about cloud computing. It defines cloud computing (see below also) and describes the federal government approach and includes 30 case studies. The case studies provide real examples of cloud computing projects. Download report.

Cloud computing defined in Vivek Kundra’s report:

Economical. Cloud computing is a pay-as-you-go approach to IT, in which a low initial investment is required to get going. Additional investment is incurred as system use increases and costs can decrease if usage decreases. In this way, cash flows better match total system cost.

Flexible. IT departments that anticipate fluctuations in user load do not have to scramble to secure additional hardware and software. With cloud computing, they can add and subtract capacity as its network load dictates, and pay only for what they use.

Rapid Implementation. Without the need to go through the procurement and certification processes, and with a near-limitless selection of services, tools, and features, cloud computing helps projects get off the ground in record time.

Consistent Service. Network outages can send an IT department scrambling for answers. Cloud computing can offer a higher level of service and reliability, and an immediate response to emergency situations.

Increased Effectiveness. Cloud computing frees the user from the finer details of IT system configuration and maintenance, enabling them to spend more time on mission-critical tasks and less time on IT operations and maintenance.

Energy Efficient. Because resources are pooled, each user community does not need to have its own dedicated IT infrastructure. Several groups can share computing resources, leading to higher utilization rates, fewer servers, and less energy consumption.

September’s Gov 2.0 event in Washington, DC featured a variety of presenters from host Tim O’Reilly to IBM, President Obama’s CTO and CIO, Rockefeller Foundation, Amazon and VMware. This BasicGov blog posts highlights a few of the presentations about technology and innovation.

Closing the Technology Gap by Aneesh Chopra (Federal Office of Science and Technology Policy), Vivek Kundra (Office of Management and Budget). Presentation talks about how government is narrowing the technology gap by aligning research and development with government strategy. They talked about consolidating infrastructure and using cloud computing technologies for example.  View video.

Cloud Changes Everything by Steve Herrod, CTO with VMware. The question and answer session with Steve and Tim O’Reilly highlights cloud computing as a key ingredient with virtualization and how this model allows organization to incrementally change costs and services.  One question Tim asked Steve was “what’s the hardest thing you are working on”. Steve’s answer was about the reality of legacy infrastructures and the need to incrementally add in newer technologies such as cloud computing versus just getting rid of the legacy investments. View video.

Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Government’s Toughest Challenges by Andrew McAfee with MIT Sloan School of Management. Andrew is the author of the book Enterprise 2.0 that explains how to adapt the new social tools and platforms to the more demanding needs of the enterprise – including government. Andrew didn’t always answer Tim’s questions but he is passionate about new technology. View video.