US Government Sets Up Online "App Store" 138
krapper writes "The Obama administration has unveiled a government 'app store' designed to push the federal bureaucracy into the era of cloud computing. The change means some federal employees will begin using services like YouTube, Gmail and WordPress, which store data on private internet servers instead of on those paid for with public money. The process will start small but will ramp up quickly, Vivek Kundra, the US chief information officer, said in a blog post on Tuesday. 'Our policies lag behind new trends, causing unnecessary restrictions on the use of new technology,' Kundra writes in the post on WhiteHouse.gov. 'We are dedicated to addressing these barriers and to improving the way government leverages new technology.' The app store is designed for federal employees doing official government business and is not intended for use by the public."
Great! (Score:1, Informative)
What could possibly go wrong?
http://www.marketwatch.com/m/story/25fdbe85-c490-42a4-9fea-50984f155661/0 [marketwatch.com]
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10474750/1/obamas-it-guru-returns-to-work.html [thestreet.com]
Oh come on, you are being rediculous (Score:5, Informative)
The first link is about Obama staffer's former colleague being investigated for crime. I don't even know what or whose fault are you trying to imply with that.
The second link is about the said staffer having committed a crime before. He shoplifted as a lot younger man, over a decade (13 years, to be exact) ago. He pleaded guilty and paid the fine... The "once a thief, always a thief" doesn't really apply to stuff like that. I myself shoplifted a few times when I was a teenager. I can understand a young man getting the small rush of doing something wrong there, with immediate risk of getting caught... It doesn't even imply that 13 years later one would have tendency to become corrupted or something.
So, what could possibly go wrong?
I think this is a great idea, as long as the programs the government will use will encrypt the data properly before storing it outside their servers. (though even that won't be necessary. I'm sure they won't use gmail for "top secret documents ;) )
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The bigger question is... (Score:4, Informative)
This actually does sound a lot like what the Obama administration is doing with healthcare reform, the economy, and the auto industry to a limited extent.
Actual presentation at Youtube (Score:3, Informative)
I watched the presentation at NASA TV, it was given at NASA Ames Research Center.
They have archive of it at Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/profile?v=eND7hT8JdwA&user=NASAtelevision [youtube.com]
That is the guy presenting the idea himself. It was interesting enough to watch it at 4 AM my local time. The numbers guy gives, like the 20% of capacity used, everyone having their own data center, it may take $600.000 (yes, 600K) to setup a weblog in certain circumstances while it is free on blogger.com like services are amazing.
As listeners are full of govt. guys, guy repeated 4-5 times that secret/critical things won't be on cloud, outside USA etc. What matters is, they will be forcing very strict privacy and security rules to vendors.
Re:Vivek Kundra is a fraud (Score:3, Informative)
Please, Vivek, explain away:
Okay, that took 30 seconds with Google. Om Malik (a respected journalist not a notorious and admitted troll like Dvorak) looked into Dvorak's claims:
http://www.examiner.com/x-10080-DC-Technology-Examiner~y2009m8d12-Dvorak-alleges-US-CIO-and-exDC-chief-is-a-fake [examiner.com]
In short, for all the points he had an opportunity to verify it turned out Dvorak was wrong and it was clear Dvorak had not tried very hard to look into the matter since random bloggers were able to quickly find proof using public internet resources for several items Dvorak claimed Kundra was lying about.
Re:Vivek Kundra is a fraud (Score:3, Informative)
Who's the troll?
Dvorak.
There are legitimate questions about the man...
Yup, questions and not answers. Questions like are you, Coolhand2120, a murderer. Asking that question without actually doing any research, when you're already a notorious troll, that's called trolling.
Legitimate journalists looked, and so far have decided there is no story. Maybe at some point in the future someone will decide Kundra's background actually is suspicious, but not finding info with a quick Google search is not evidence that he's lying. Just as quickly googling "Coolhand2020 innocent of murder" is not in any way evidence you are a murderer or sufficient for me to start making Web posts for any reason other than trolling.
Re:And Gov2.0 considers Trusted Computing a key (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, but, from what I've seen...pretty much ONLY the DoD uses that system. And knowing how turf wars go with gov. agencies..I doubt they want to share that system.