How Taxpayers Are Saving via Cloud Computing
I read an interesting article that quoted a government official on how much U.S. taxpayers will save by the government’s migration to the cloud. In it, Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, was quoted as saying:
"We’ve been building data center after data center, acquiring application after application, and frankly, what’s that done is it’s driven the cost and investments in technology across the board. ”We cannot continue in this trajectory." He said that the government spends $19 billion out of a $76 billion federal information technology budget on infrastructure, and much of that is duplicative.
Cloud computing, putting commonly used software into a shared set of servers and letting agencies buy and use only what they need, will bring down costs drastically. The U.S. has already created Apps.gov – which frees the government from building and maintaining software and infrastructure and enables it to buy technology from third parties.
One example of cloud computing success in the government sector is USA.gov, a listing of government information and jobs. It cost about $2.5 million yearly to maintain, but, In May, the U.S. moved it to the cloud, and taxpayers now foot a maintenance bill for $800,000 per year.
It’s very encouraging to see numbers like this, and I hope that different government agencies continue to move their databases and apps on the cloud. The U.S. is not only making its operations more efficient, but they’re saving us money, too.