In today’s deeply divided Washington, there is now one thing that almost everyone agrees with: The federal government could save a great deal of money and boost its performance by adopting cloud computing solutions for many of its IT needs. Through a mixture of public, private and hybrid cloud solutions, government technology can be scaled in ways to better meet citizen needs while improving federal services. The Obama Administration — and particularly the recently departed Federal CIO Vivek Kundra — identified these opportunities early on and has been working diligently to position the federal government to take full advantage of the cloud for just such reasons.
What’s more, the broader productivity gains derived from moving to the cloud — which industry has been quick to recognize — can help stimulate our whole economy. Obstacles exist, of course, and chief among these are impediments to the smooth flow of data across borders. But as Kundra noted in a New York Times opinion piece Wednesday, the United States has an opportunity to play a leading role in reducing the obstacles to international cloud computing. I wholeheartedly agree with this assessment, and hope policy-makers of all stripes in Washington will embrace a similar vision.