The White House has proposed to establish one or more centralized service providers for non-military agencies for key strategic IT services in order to reduce duplicative and wasteful spending, reduce facility space usage and energy consumption, increase security, and improve service delivery.
As part of its fiscal 2011 budget proposal it said cloud computing could play a part in that effort, referring to the practice of meeting computing needs online through an Internet browser, rather than owning hardware and software and physically possessing it. In this model agencies subscribe to and share computing assets.
OMB wants to build on initiatives such as Apps.gov, which GSA billed as a "cloud computing storefront" when it launched the site in September.
Apps.gov, for example, categorizes available services by function — CRM, data management, communications, etc. — to make it easier for federal government customers to identify and compare products, says GSA
The White House said it also wants to consolidate federal data centers, which have increased to over 1,100 in conflict with what it describes as the proven best practice of consolidating and reducing the number of data centers to reduce costs, energy consumption, and environmental impacts, as well as improve service and performance.
