The Environmental Protection Agency has identified three programs to move to the cloud within the next 18 months. One of the systems, a "managed, trusted Internet protocol service" was recently implemented and a consolidated help desk and email will follow, said Malcolm Jackson, chief information officer at EPA while speaking April 6 at an ACT-IAC event in Washington, D.C.

The recently established, cloud-based security mechanism--the first of the three cloud applications--"allows our agency to leverage existing services provided by the General Services Administration and eliminate the operation and maintenance costs for the agency to deliver a trusted Internet connection on our own," explained Jackson.

EPA is also in the process of establishing internal cloud guidelines, said Jackson. The agencywide strategy is almost finalized and aims to:

• Establish common criteria for assessing cloud computing alternatives, including external cloud services or EPA private-cloud services;
• establish standards for engaging cloud service providers, which will leverage base-line service options established by the General Services Administration;
• establish external government cloud services for low sensitivity applications to be offered as an extension to existing hosting services; and
• extend private cloud services to EPA's four primary data centers. EPA's private cloud services will be targeted at medium-sensitivity applications that require high availability and internal data integration.

Jackson said EPA has a leg up, compared to other agencies, when it comes fulfilling the Office of Management and Budget's agency IT goals.

"We're well positioned to respond to the Federal CIO Vivek Kundra's 25-point implementation plan," said Jackson. "EPA already established and pilots a process like [TechStat] and we intend to institutionalize it with part of the CIO-CFO review that we began when I started."

Federal agencies were instructed to hold at least one internally-managed "TechStat" meeting by March 31, according to an Office of Management and Budget in a "TechStat Toolkit" available on cio.gov.

What's more EPA has already consolidated some of its email data centers.

"EPA had begun working on a consolidation strategy some time before OMB's plan was published. We piloted a major consolidation plan with our email service across the country."

OMB's data center consolidation effort aims to shutter 800 facilities by 2015. The OMB cloud first mandate requires every agency to have one cloud solution in place by December 2011 and up to three cloud-based programs by June 2012.

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