Budget Icebergs, Fiscal Anchors and a Boat (Fed)RAMP to Nowhere?
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It’s often said that in order to make money, you have to spend money; invest in order to succeed.
However, when faced with the realities of budget shortfalls and unsavory economic pressure, it seems the easiest thing to do is simply hunt around for top-line blips on the budget radar and kill them, regardless of the long term implications that ceasing investment in efficiency and transparency programs have in reducing bottom line pain.
To wit, Alex Howard reports “Congress weighs deep cuts to funding for federal open government data platforms“:
Data.gov, IT.USASpending.gov, and other five other websites that offer platforms for open government transparency are facing imminent closure. A comprehensive report filed by Jason Miller, executive editor of Federal News Radio, confirmed that the United States of Office of Management and Budget is planning to take open government websites offline over the next four months because of a 94% reduction in federal government funding in the Congressional budget…
Cutting these funds would also shut down the Fedspace federal social network and, notably, the FedRAMP cloud computing cybersecurity programs. Unsurprisingly, open government advocates in the Sunlight Foundation and the larger community have strongly opposed these cuts.
Did you catch the last paragraph? They’re kidding, right?
After demonstrable empirical data that shows how Vivek Kundra and his team’s plans for streamlining government IT is already saving money (and will continue to do so,) this is what we get? Slash and burn? I attempted to search for the investment made thus far in FedRAMP using the IT Dashboard, but couldn’t execute an appropriate search. Anyone know that answer?
Read more on the topic by Daniel Schuman “Budget Technopocalypse: Proposed Congressional Budgets Slash Funding for Data Transparency“
Now, I’m not particularly fond of how the initial FedRAMP drafts turned out, but I’m optimistic that the program will evolve, will ultimately make a difference and lead to more assured, cost-efficient and low-friction adoption of Cloud Computing. We need FedRAMP to succeed and we need continued investment in it to do so. Let’s not throw the baby out with the Cloud water.
We literally cannot afford for FedRAMP (or these other transparency programs) to be cut — these are the very programs that will lead to long term efficiency and fiscally-responsible programs across the U.S. Government. They will ultimately make us more competitive.
Vote with your clicks. Support the Sunlight Foundation.
/Hoff
Related articles
- Group Says Open Government Programs are ‘Priceless’ (techdailydose.nationaljournal.com)
- Open Government Sites Initiated Under Obama Targeted for Closing (bespacific.com)
- Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut (readwriteweb.com)
- Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut (readwriteweb.com)
- Budget Technopocalypse Deepens: Transparency Sites Will Go Dark In A Few Months (nsrtk.blogspot.com)
- FedRAMP: Critical to Cost-Effective Cloud Computing Cybersecurity (circleid.com)
- Video Of My CSA Presentation: “Commode Computing: Relevant Advances In Toiletry & I.T. – From Squat Pots to Cloud Bots – Waste Management Through Security Automation” (rationalsurvivability.com)
- FYI: New NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture (rationalsurvivability.com)
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