Page 16 - CARAHSOFT, November/December 2020

EDGE COMPUTING
Executive Viewpoint
A conversation with
LYTWAIVE HUTCHINSON
LYTWAIVE HUTCHINSON
CIO, Federal Emergency Management Agency
FEMA’s CIO discusses how the agency is embracing edge computing and the technology’s impact on the future of IT
How is FEMA using edge computing for daily operations and disaster response, including COVID-19?
Simply stated, edge computing extends computing and processing power to the location where the data is being generated.
For FEMA’s daily operations, edge computing is used at our headquarters, in our 10 regions throughout the country and in our mobile emergency response teams. Our edge requirements must be able to expand to meet FEMA’s emergency needs across the nation (for our state, local, tribal and territorial partners).
The COVID-19 pandemic caused FEMA, like many federal agencies, to undertake an unprecedented increase in telework. Subsequently, a major expansion evolved through our use of context-rich, multimedia collaboration
tools on our mobile-device platforms. For the near future and beyond,
this progression represents a major change in how we execute work. It has enormous implications for how we develop processes to support our workforce as we continue to serve
the needs of our citizens and disaster survivors.
FEMA is addressing the technological challenges that come with this environment — including enterprise data created and processed outside the data center or cloud — as part of our overall Cloud Strategy. For example, our ongoing FEMA Enterprise Services Modernization initiative is upgrading infrastructure hardware to include self-protection and enhanced management capabilities. Utilizing the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions contract and partnership with the General Services
Although the cloud and its capabilities remain very important, the notion of central processing is changing, and we must keep pace.
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