Email: How can the two Washingtons be so out of sync?
The federal governments’ Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra is a maniac who must be stopped. He is working tirelessly, night and day to attack information technology inefficiencies in government while improving services for citizens and taxpayers.
He is advocating bold, systematic and structural “change.”
He is convinced, against all reason and objective data, that cloud based computer service is the inevitable future of technology. Massive, highly energy efficient server farms where the marginal cost of hosting huge amounts of data is tiny fractions of pennies…who hired this guy?!
Here is a report that he produced that outlines case studies at the federal, state, county and municipal level outlining examples where governments saved money and improved service by moving toward cloud based computer systems.
One of the case studies stands out in my mind.
The Department of Interior is migrating their 80,000 email users to a single, cloud-based service provider. They claim one-third cost savings AND higher quality service level agreements (up-time).
What does the federal government’s CIO know that we don’t?
How can Washington state produce a report that says, in effect, there not only no savings from moving away from state-designed, managed, hosted systems comparable to the private marketplace? The state can beat the price of Google, Microsoft, Amazon and others? Really? The state report looked at one vendor (Microsoft) and one of their model programs. Is that really the extent to all of the flexibility, pricing, services and offerings in the marketplace? Amazon, Google and so many other service providers….how can all of them be qualified to serve Washington, D.C. and other states but not sufficient for us here in state government?
Fundamentally, how can Washington, D.C. and Washington State be so out of sync in our approach to technology?
Here’s the case study language:
“Department of the Interior Announced Project:
Agency-wide E-mail
The Department of the Interior is pursuing a Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud computing model for e-mail. DOI has 80,000 e-mail users who are widely dispersed across the United States.
Migrating 80,000 mailboxes (from 13 specific systems) to one unified cloud provider
States. They are currently supported by a very complex messaging infrastructure comprised of more than a dozen different e-mail systems. The Department had already determined that a single e-mail infrastructure would reduce the complexity of the overall system and improve the level of service provided to their users when it decided to explore cloud-based solutions.
When considering how best to deliver a single e-mail system, the Department analyzed the opportunities for cost savings presented by cloud computing. The numbers were compelling: by implementing e-mail using an external commercial SaaS model, the Department expects to provide improved service to its 80,000 users for one-third the amount of money that it spends today. The Department is moving forward with this project with a completion date in Fiscal Year 2011.16″
(End of report)
Your partner in service,
Reuven.
I just read that DIS-initiated study today, and was thinking ‘why only MS, why not Google etc.’. It seemed pretty half-baked and odd to me as well. I mean, it was going to cost us MORE to outsource it, when I think I remember the GMAP reporting back in oh, January had some quotes about $2 a mailbox for Google and $5 a mailbox for centralized at DIS…I’d have to watch the vid again to be sure.
I would think maybe the way the RFP was written precluded the contractor from doing a REAL study, comparing more than one option. Or, that perhaps so many needs (secure e-mail, etc.) makes us ‘special’ (though that seems unlikely)…
This is really kinda shocking. Could it be the result of our process for tech acquisition?
Seems like this would be a good time to see if any of our procedures are leading to costly mistakes like this.
Good to see someone’s thinking about these things.