The Federal CIO Council stood up the Cloud First Task Force June 24, the next iteration of what was formerly known as the Cloud Computing Advisory Council, a National Institute of Standards and Technology official announced June 29 at an AFCEA Bethesda event in Washington, D.C.

The new group has greater emphasis on federal standards around cloud computing and will lean heavily on NIST and its forthcoming USG Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, said Dawn Leaf, senior advisor and senior executive for cloud computing at NIST's information technology laboratory.

A draft of the roadmap is due out Nov. 2 and a public comment period will immediately follow the release, said Leaf.

After 14 months of work and three formal workshops, NIST has finally explained what exactly will be included in the roadmap. According to Leaf, the roadmap will:

• describe a conceptual model cloud computing reference architecture and related taxonomy;
• present business use cases;
• identify existing interoperability, portability and security standards and guidance that apply to the cloud;
• cite high-priority gaps which need new or revised standards, guidance and technology; and
• recommend action plans and timelines that agencies can use to deploy cloud computing.

The roadmap will be comprised of two volumes. One will be a more general document which frames the topic and describes NIST's work for someone "not at the working level." The second volume is intended for "those actively working on cloud computing initiatives," including government cloud adopters, said Leaf.

Leaf emphasized in her remarks that the prominence of cloud computing as a governmentwide initiative is not going away just because Federal CIO Vivek Kundra, founder of the "cloud first" initiative is leaving government.

"Vivek helped cloud computing be considered at the senior-most level of the administration. But equally or even more importantly, cloud is a global trend," said Leaf.

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