One Thing Government Must Get Right

Five years ago today, the first Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, issued the cloud computing strategy for government. That’s around two-and-a-half lifetimes ago in technology years. And while there’s been a lot of great progress made, we must do more.

A few days ago I was interviewed by the Federal Times about a variety of technology topics, but there was one nagging question that stayed with me: What is one thing government has to get right?

I had the benefit of restricting my response to the technology space, but that answer could still be a multitude of things: agile software development, electronic records, collaboration tools, digital engagement strategies…pick any one from a healthy list of problems we face daily.

But my answer is a simple one:

“Embrace the cloud and use it properly.”

That may sound simple, but it is no small thing. There are tens of billions of taxpayer dollars spent every year on technology across the Executive Branch. And if you’ve been paying attention at all in the past few years, it’s easy to see that the government overall isn’t very successful at directly operating large scale technology systems. We must admit that we’re not good at it. The old ways of too-big-to-fail contracts, on-premise systems, and data centers that are wholly…