Senate Cuts Cloud Services From Budget That Would Allow for Data Center and IT Infrastructure Consolidation–Back to the 8 Track Tapes Next?

These folks continue to scare me with the limited knowledge of what is needed with IT for the government and it seems this lack of comprehension stands to just about strangle all the resources the government needs. Do we not perhaps realize that with consolidation we stand to save a ton of energy for one item that could be understood here? One prime example of power savings is what Dr. Halamka has done up at Harvard and it’s beginning to show in a big was with less power consumption and he knows how to use “the cloud” as well for additional power and data advantages.

I guess when I look back to March of this year we still saw both houses trying to figure out how to keep government employees off of peer to peer file sharing services when working on their government computers and then more recently we hear about the folks at the SEC and DOD hanging out on porn sites, which they have a ton of peer to peer too. What is odd is that if you read the link below on the Senate suggestion they wanted to put in place a “warning” to let the other person know that you are sharing files, not good enough with privacy issues.

Breaking News: House Passed a Bill to Prevent Government Employees From Using Peer to Peer File Sharing!

It is also going to take the House 3 years for a wireless network.

House of Representatives Going Wireless – Slated to Take 3 Years And Could Have Some Real Healthcare Management Benefits for Members

We hear about health literacy needing help all the time, well how do we do this unless the folks at the top begin to “literate” themselves somehow. At least some of things they say would perhaps not end up with being a foot in mouth comment.

HS National Plan to Improve Health Literacy – Not Going To Happen Until We Focus on Using Technology (The Tool for Literacy) Which Includes Role Models at HHS And Other Places in Government

I feel bad for the FDA of all agencies because if one single agency needs real time updated information and data consolidation it is that department for sure. The House is trying on that end of things so at least there’s hope that we do have some leaders that get this.

Members of Congress Send Letter to HHS to Increase the Budget of the FDA - It is Rapidly Becoming One of the “Most Connected” Federal Agencies

There are non critical data sources that can inexpensively reside on the cloud and we all win with those efforts.

I’m sorry but the reasoning here for not approving is due to lack of proper and detailed guidance” is not very strong of an argument in light of everything I posted above and it sounds like more 8 track thinking sad to say. BD

The Senate Appropriations Committee has boosted federal spending for implementing web services next year but cut back on funding to use cloud computing to consolidate data centers and IT infrastructure throughout federal agencies.

As allocated by a Senate spending bill (S. 3677), passed July 29, the federal government will get $40 million in the fiscal 2011 federal budget to build a set of services that can be used across agencies to foster efficiency and collaboration between agency systems.

The funds, which meet the requirements of a plan outlined in a presidential directive on transparency released in December 2009, will be available until Sept. 30, 2013, according to the bill.

At the same time the Senate green-lighted millions in funding for shared services, it drastically reduced funds allocated by the Obama administration to adopt cloud computing, putting a crimp in its data-center consolidation plans.

In that report senators said that while they do support the move to cloud computing to improve efficiency and transparency, they are concerned that the federal plan to consolidate data centers via cloud computing lacks proper and detailed guidance.

Senate Funds Web Services, Cuts Cloud Computing -- InformationWeek