EoW November 2011

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EuroWire – November 2011 32
Transat lant ic Cable
“Public and private organisations that preserve the status quo of
wasteful spending will be punished, while those that embrace
the cloud will be rewarded with substantial savings and
21st Century jobs.”
An unabashed proponent of cloud computing, Vivek Kundra,
the Obama administration’s chief information o cer from
2009 until this past August, was summing up a conviction
that he was able to implement during his relatively brief time
in government service. Mr Kundra laid out the “Cloud First”
policy which requires US agencies to give priority to cloud
computing services. Now, in an op-ed piece in the New York
Times, he was urging his views on a broader constituency.
(“Tight Budget? Look to the Cloud,” 30th August). On his
arrival in Washington Mr Kundra quickly perceived what
he considered vast ine ciencies in the $80 billion federal
IT budget. He also saw an opportunity to increase productivity
and save money by embracing a shift from the hardware
and software that IT users buy and maintain, to low-cost,
maintenance-free services based on the Internet and run by
private companies.
In one “particularly egregious example of waste” cited by
Mr Kundra, the US Defense Department last year pulled the
plug on a personnel system devised by Northrop Grumman
after spending approximately $850 million on it over 10 years.
Another Washington newcomer, the keen amateur techie
President Barack Obama, needed very little persuading to
inaugurate “Cloud First,” which mandates the transition to the
cloud of at least three projects for every federal agency by the
summer of 2012.
Some agencies, like the General Services Administration, which
supplies products and communications to government o ces,
quickly adopted cloud computing. The GSA has cut IT costs
on things as simple as its email system by over 50%. But other
agencies have baulked. The State Department, for instance, has
raised concerns about whether the cloud approach introduces
security risks, since data is stored o -site by private contractors.
❈ Mr Kundra, who has moved to Harvard University as a fellow
at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Politics and
Public Policy, refutes this objection. Cloud computing, he
says, is often far more secure than traditional computing
because companies like Google and Amazon can attract
and retain cyber-security personnel of a higher quality
than many governmental agencies. He noted that federal
employees are so accustomed to using cloud services like
Dropbox and Gmail in their personal lives that, even if their
agencies do not formally permit cloud computing, they use
it for work purposes anyway. This can create a “shadow IT”
that leads to a more vulnerable organisation than would a
properly overseen cloud computing system.
❈ Mr Kundra blames “the IT cartel” – a powerful group of
private contractors that encourages reliance on ine cient
software and hardware expensive to acquire and to maintain
– for the waste by governments of billions of dollars on
unnecessary information technology. Warning that the
US cannot a ord to be left behind in the cloud computing
revolution, he cited some pertinent Japanese and Indian
statistics. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of
Japan estimates that the Japanese cloud computing market
is likely to reach $20.1 billion by 2015, and the country is
implementing a cloud initiative as a key tenet of national
economic strategy. Similar growth is predicted for India,
where the cloud market is projected to grow to $3 billion by
2015 and create 100,000 jobs. Mr Kundra wrote: “As foreign
governments prioritise investment in the cloud, the United
States cannot hesitate because of hypothetical security
threats that serve the entrenched interests of the IT cartel.”
❈ Practical as well as visionary, the New Delhi-born
Mr Kundra pointed out that a critical issue of cloud
computing is whether cloud data can and should ow
between nations, and what restrictions should be placed
upon that movement. In his view the next step is the
creation of a global Cloud First policy that compels nations
to work together on solutions. He noted that the US,
together with the leading nations of Europe and Asia, has
an opportunity to announce such an initiative at the World
Economic Forum 2012 meeting set for 25th-29th January in
Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.
Canada and the US
A somewhat limp handshake across
the world’s longest international border
Compelled or otherwise, the international unity of purpose
outlined in the previous item faces some hurdles, to judge
from recent ndings by the leading Canadian public policy
think tank. Relations along the 3,987-mile border between
Canada and “the lower 48" of the United States are not a worry
to either neighbour. (Canada and the state of Alaska coexist,
also peacefully, along a 1,538-mile border of their own.) But the
Vancouver-based Fraser Institute did discern a rather jaundiced
American view on Canada’s attentiveness to those interfaces.
The results of a study published 10 th May by Fraser indicate that
members of the US Congress see Canada as a stable and reliable
source of energy, but they show little support for Canada-US
trade and are concerned about what they perceive as lax border
security. In its analysis of US congressional debates between
2001 and 2010 where the focus of discussion was Canada
or Canadian policy, the institute found that, while Canadian
policy on energy and the environment drew positive responses
from American legislators, the same cannot be said for border
security.
In What Congress Thinks of Canada, Fraser noted persistent and
repeated allegations by American senators and members of
the House of Representatives that Canada was a way-station
for some of the 9/11 plane hijackers and is still insu ciently
rigorous about illicit narcotics and terrorism.
“When discussing border security, American politicians tend
most often to speak of the Canadian and Mexican borders in
roughly the same manner,” wrote Alexander Moens, a co-author
of the report. “Their concern about the threat of terrorists
staging attacks from Canada remains high.”
Dorothy Fabian – USA Editor