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18F launches cloud.gov

18f.gsa.gov

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Re: 18F launches cloud.gov

#21

Post by tvanantwerp »

eonw wrote: post #15

I think 18F is a great idea and seems to be doing good things, but are there not existing options they can use? Why reinvent the wheel?

I saw several people from 18F present at Code for America Summit the other week, and my understanding is that the regulatory overhead involved in launching new government tech services (something like 4000 pages of relevant regulations to comply with) is so large that it's usually a boondoggle. Part of what they are doing is building services with that regulatory compliance built into it, so agencies don't have to slog through all of that for every little thing they want built.

Re: 18F launches cloud.gov

#22

Post by mbesto »

eonw wrote: post #15

I think 18F is a great idea and seems to be doing good things, but are there not existing options they can use? Why reinvent the wheel?

Governance, Risk and Compliance. Even if the private sector does GRC better than the government, they (the gov't) at the very least have control. Not to mention their stack appears to be mostly open source (Docker, CF, etc). This makes total sense and is a "best of both worlds" approach.

Re: 18F launches cloud.gov

#23

Post by Yhippa »

The more I am observing the government I wonder if it will ever be possible for the the 18F treatment to hit the more old traditional Federal Government agencies like CMS. Talk about byzantine regulations.

Re: 18F launches cloud.gov

#24

Post by sailfast »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11
plonh wrote: post #6

This is cool, but,...18F are consultants, who pop in, wave a magic wand, and pop out. Many of its employees are.bound by law to a max 2 or 4 year term. Will cloud.gov support its users for 5, 10, 15 years?

18F are _not_ consultants. They're federal employees with a term limit who are domain experts. EDIT: See sailfast's comment below. I think we're quibbling over semantics.

A chunk of 18F are consultants to other government agencies and provide their services to government for a 100% cost-reimbursable fee for specific projects, much like a private consulting firm. https://18f.gsa.gov/consulting/ https://pages.18f.gov/joining-18f/who-we-are-hiring/position...

Re: 18F launches cloud.gov

#25

Post by sailfast »

wpears wrote: post #16

The video at the "byzantine regulatory framework" link[1] is worth a watch (at least the first 10 minutes to get a taste). One of the most valuable offerings of cloud.gov is (hopefully) the ease with which it can go through the ATO and FISMA processes because it was designed with them in mind. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1S52B1-NT4

I'm not sure how this will expedite the ATO process as it uses technology that has not been STIG'd yet and may not have a "by the book" way to sign off (Docker, for instance, can be painful to ATO).

EDIT: After viewing Noah's FISMA guidance vid (nice work) there is definitely possibility to expedite but to really grease things you'd want to create a certification arm within GSA that can sign off the risk or perform a "certified" risk assessment on behalf of the customer agency so you could do things your way while still allowing them to sleep at night. Once you get into sensitive data loads and non-public stuff people start to get even more risk averse. / End Edit

That said, I'm hopeful that it does pave the way for change because this kind of platform is critical to reducing the barriers to experimentation in government. Perhaps because 18F is committing to supporting / upgrading the platform it will allow Federal CIOs and CISOs to shift some of the risk to 18F and sign the paperwork more quickly.

Re: 18F launches cloud.gov

#27

Post by BinaryIdiot »

Oh this is interesting. Reminds me of the EzBake platform that's only been briefly talked about (http://www.cloudera.com/content/cloudera/en/resources/librar...).

I wonder how many agencies will allow developers to jump into this; seems many of the agencies have a "must be built internally here" attitude about some of this stuff. Still, looks like a good step forward.

Re: 18F launches cloud.gov

#28

Post by panzagl »

plonh wrote: post #6

This is cool, but,...18F are consultants, who pop in, wave a magic wand, and pop out. Many of its employees are.bound by law to a max 2 or 4 year term. Will cloud.gov support its users for 5, 10, 15 years?

The downvoters don't understand how federal contracts work- maintenance will be bid to the usual suspects, with the downward spiral that entails.

Re: 18F launches cloud.gov

#29

Post by lifeisstillgood »

I am really enthusiastic about the potential for building Eco-systems of small developer companies that focus on building the thousands and thousands of package that governments the world over need for their stutory obligations

The blueprint for USDS was the UK digital service, this is hitting some issues as they have started a ball rolling but now look like a bottleneck. Some of the "agile" restrictions and some of the centralised nature of development teams are likely to go - but the essence is a fantastic opportunity and landscape ahead

(See my site gratuitous I know but http://www.oss4gov.org/manifesto)

Re: 18F launches cloud.gov

#30

Post by Zach_the_Lizard »

cryowaffle wrote: post #10

Glad to see the healthcare.gov debacle leading to a positive shift in mentality at .gov.

As someone who worked in the Federal sphere, nothing's changed at all.

The same procurement rules and regulations remain in place with all the issues they cause. 18F is a nice experiment, and they do have some wins, but they are just a drop in the bucket.

The whole procurement and management process is so broken that it's a wonder any project gets completed. The same few bad actors keep winning contracts over and over again, fail, but then don't have any repercussions. In fact, their failures actually net them more money more often than not as contracts get extended now that the contractor has the government by the balls.

IMO the best thing the government could do is a massive in-housing of functions. So much infrastructure within the Federal sphere has contractors essentially acting as PMs, the rank and file builders, the maintenance staff, etc., all with many layers of prime contractors and subs stuffed with middlemen.

This doesn't go just for IT. Lots of simple functions are outsourced to little benefit. Some of it I think might be because it's hard to fire Federal workers and contractors aren't unionized, but it would be better to fix those issues than hire the same person for twice the salary (when accounting for middlemen, margins, etc.)

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