HOT SPRINGS, Va. - The Homeland Security Department plans to use a General Services Administration-provided infrastructure-as-a-service offering to host its public-facing websites, said Richard Spires, DHS chief information officer, while speaking at the ACT-IAC Management of Change Conference in Hot Springs, Va.

It has been an agenda item for some time: Spires first mentioned the plan to move DHS's public-facing websites to the public cloud over seven months ago.

"We're partnering with GSA, in this case, through their infrastructure-as-a-service offering. We just issued an RFP," said Spires May 16.

"We're starting. Let's say we're putting our toe in the water. As we get more experience with that, as FedRAMP comes online--I'm sure Dave McClure and others will talk some more about that later--as the security issues get worked out I think you're going to see a much more aggressive shift by a number of agencies, and I think even DHS will be in this, where we'll start to move more and more of our stuff to the public cloud as long as we're comfortable with the security," said Spires.

GSA approved 11 vendors for an IaaS blanket purchase agreement in October of last year; however, the products are still inching through a new governmentwide certification and accreditation program called FedRAMP, or the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program. FedRAMP hit several speed bumps in December 2010--practically on the eve of its scheduled launch--as policy issues arose while trying to marry FedRAMP and the Federal Information Security Management Act, a GSA official recently allowed.

GSA's IaaS offerings currently lack authority to operate and FedRAMP approval, but DHS has plenty to work on as it waits for its ideal public-cloud solution to be polished. While speaking at MOC, Spires said DHS is focused on:

• Rationalizing all IT infrastructure--data center consolidation and cloud first are only part of that goal;
• Delivering existing programs better, and looking more critically at large-scale integrations--to that end, DHS canceled its departmentwide enterprise resource planning system known as Transformation and Systems Consolidation on May 13; and
• Eliminating duplication and integrating where it makes sense.

"[Focus in these areas] has the potential to really drive cost savings, but also to really put us in a better position over time," said Spires.

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