Venyu Blog

For the feds it’s either feast or famine.  And sometimes it’s a little bit of both.

First, the feast. According to this article in InfoWorld, starting in 2012 federal agencies are being encouraged to move from traditional in-house tech deployments to the cloud, “whenever a secure, reliable cost-effective option exists.”

Quoting Jeffrey Zients, the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) at a tech conference last month in McLean, Va., according to Internet.com,  “Government agencies too often rely on proprietary, custom IT solutions. We need to fundamentally shift this mindset from building custom systems to adopting lighter technologies and shared solutions.”

The Obama’s point man on cloud, CIO Vivek Kundra, at a recent event said, “With the default policy towards cloud, what that really moves is behavior toward where agencies are going to provision IT rather than build wherever possible, especially when it comes to commodity IT,”

InfoWorld reports the cloud “strategy” fits neatly into the Obama administration’s overall plan to institute significant changes to the government’s IT cycle, from budgeting to procurement to management. Among other tactics, the feds have deployed an online dashboard to track spending and the progress of IT projects government-wide.

The stated goal is to pinpoint projects that need to be tweaked or terminated. The aforementioned initiatives could help the government achieve its goal of reducing its current count of 2,100 data centers by 40 percent come 2015 (or the equivalent of 800 data centers).

Now if that reduction in data centers comes with some promise to reduce spending and rein in the bloated $13 trillion federal deficit then I say this is a worthwhile endeavor where even private sector companies have a value-added takeaway.

And let’s not forget the famine part of this story.

On the very next day Computerworld UK reported that 10 computers used by NASA for its space shuttle program were sold to the public without first being “wiped” of sensitive data. Another computer was taken back in-house before it could be sold included information on space shuttle related technology. Last but not least the publication reports computers that were being prepared for sale were found at the Kennedy Space Center’s disposal facility with NASA’s Internet Protocol information prominently displayed, which the investigators said could provide hackers with details they needed to target NASA network assets and exploit weaknesses.

In an internal review, the space agency found that the Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers and the Ames Research Center use software to wipe equipment before disposing of them. Langley Research Center did not require this technology because it removed hard drives prior to disposal. However, the Kennedy center was the only one that had a testing process in place to verify that disks were wiped, as required by NASA policy.

It was flaws in the Kennedy center’s verification process that resulted in the sale, and near sale, of the computers still containing sensitive data.

“This occurred because NASA managers are not adequately overseeing sanitization and disposition processes,” the space agency’s office of inspector general said in its report and to put a fine point on it: “NASA’s sanitization policies are incomplete and responsible personnel did not consistently follow or were unaware of applicable policy.”

The independent investigators have recommended NASA’s CIO “carry out further reviews, take remedial actions and share best practices.”

Couldn’t you just see the TV ads now, complete with one of those ‘yell and sell’ pitchmen: “Get your gently used NASA computers at prices that will never be this low again. Comes complete with all the telemetry you need to fly your own shuttle. Amaze your friends.  Impress your kids and be the envy of all your neighbors. And if you call in the next ten minutes we’ll even throw in complete blueprints for the entire shuttle fleet. Hurry. These Must Go Today! Call now. Operators are standing by.”

As I said, sometimes its feast, other times its famine but when it comes to the federal government, you’re almost always guaranteed to get both.