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important economic issues, leverage the economy of scale, reduce our cost pro le. Centralization is getting everyone on the same page about security, enterprise architecture and development methodology.”
Another agreed, saying that the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act, the Federal Information Security Management and various guidance and reviews from the Of ce of Man- agement and Budget further compli- cate matters.
“OMB scrutinizes everything we spend,” he said. “FISMA basi- cally says, ‘Cloud bad.’ FITARA is the other way around. FITARA is one CIO to rule them all, which is where I get to my point: Is central management the best idea or does it put more steps in our way? Do we need to have some better scrutiny of how we’re going to govern this cloud migration, or should we just step out of the way of those who are performing the cloud migration — a trust-but-verify type of thing?”
Many said guardrails are prefer- able to prescriptions and advocated a measured approach to governance.
“It’s almost the same as when people say ‘agile,’ and you think re-
works, dancing and confetti blowing everywhere, but it’s really dif cult,” one executive said. “Everybody doesn’t do it the same exact way, nor do they have the same skill sets on their teams. To be able to know where your resources are and to be able to apply those resources when needed, that is really how we want to move this conversation forward.”
Another participant said develop- ments in edge computing could be part of the solution. “We’re realizing that cloud computing is centralized computing. It requires a lot of net- work bandwidth, so you need to be able to move as much processing to the edge as possible.”
The executive added that agen- cies must embrace the cloud in some
form because future innovations will spring from that environment.
With the new iPhone X offer- ing the equivalent of four servers’ worth of power in the user’s pock- et, the participant said, “I can move most of the analytic processing and maybe even some of the security to this device. And if it’s managed correctly, I can even ensure its integrity.”
Of course, “that’s coming down the line, but we need to be in the cloud first,” he added. “We need to understand the implications of service-based management, devel- opment and DevOps before we can take advantage of that. Otherwise, we’re going to get really far behind as we go into this next wave.” n
PERSPECTIVES
PARTICIPANTS
Richie Balkissoon
Cloud Architect, Department of Homeland Security
Claudio Belloli
FedRAMP Program Manager for Cybersecurity, General Services Administration
Mark Busby
CTO, National Archives and Records Administration
Robert Frum
CIO, Navy International Programs Of ce
Gregory Garcia
CIO/G-6, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Tim Hale
Acquisition, Logistics andTechnology Enterprise Systems and Services, U.S. Army
Capt. Craig H. Hodge
Deputy CTO, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security
Robert Holloway
Enterprise Architect, PEO EIS, U.S. Army
Darryl Peek
Director of Operations, Of ce of the CTO, Department of Homeland Security
Ed Simcox
Deputy CTO, Department of Health and Human Services
Tony Summerlin
Senior Adviser, Federal Communications Commission
Andras Szakal
Vice President and CTO, IBM U.S. Federal
Navin Vembar
CTO, General Services Administration
Note: FCW Editor-in-Chief Troy
K. Schneider led the roundtable discussion.The Dec. 12, 2017, gathering was underwritten by
IBM, but both the substance of
the discussion and the recap on these pages are strictly editorial products. Neither IBM nor any of the roundtable participants had input beyond their Dec. 12 comments.
January/February 2018
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