Selected agencies have made progress implementing OMB’s “cloud first” IT policy but future efforts require better planning, GAO has said.
GAO said the seven agencies it looked at incorporated cloud-computing requirements into their policies and processes. One, for example, incorporated a review of its IT investment portfolio to identify candidates for a cloud solution into its IT plan.
All met OMB deadlines to identify three cloud implementations by February 2011 and to implement at least one service by December 2011, and all identified opportunities for future cloud implementations, such as moving storage and help desk services to a cloud environment.
However, while each of the seven agencies submitted plans to OMB for implementing the cloud solutions, all of the plans but one were missing key required elements, according to GAO-12-756.
It said, for example, that seven of the 20 plans did not include estimated costs and none of the plans for services that were to migrate existing functionality to a cloud-based service included plans for retiring or repurposing the associated legacy systems.
GAO recommended that the CIOs of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, State, Treasury, GSA and the Small Business Administration establish estimated costs, performance goals, and plans to retire associated legacy systems for cloud-based services, as well as develop, at a minimum, estimated costs, milestones, performance goals, and plans for moving on from legacy systems to planned additional cloud-based services.
The Agriculture, Homeland Security, and Treasury, and the GSA agreed, while State agreed only with the second recommendation. HHS and SBA did not agree or disagree.
