The impending departure of U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra – who was the focal point for much of the consolidation planning and cloud migration effort, has unsettled many, not least because it's unclear whether Kundra's successor will enforce his "cloud first" policy toward new applications.
Half of respondents to Science Logic's survey said cloud-first has already had an impact on their operations; 38 percent are waiting to see what affect it has.
The General Services Administration announced last week it had moved its 17,000 workers onto cloud-based email, the first federal agency to move so heavily into the cloud.
The $6.7 million project to migrate GSA to Google's Gmail began in December, required migration of more than 60 terabytes of data and would cut email maintenance costs in half during the five-year span of the contract, according to GSA.
Microsoft, Amazon and Google are competing for the email business of other federal agencies. Next in line for full cloud-based email is the Agriculture Department, which expects to have its 120,000 employees in the fog by year end.
Most of which is good news for federal IT employees. Like much of the economic and IT news during the past few years, however, it's mainly good by contrast – federal IT people survived the latest flap well because they got it in the neck much earlier than the rest of the government.
So they're not really that much better off, it's just that the bleeding's stopped and most of the wounds have already scabbed over.
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