EoW November 2011

Transat lant ic Cable

is likely to reach $20.1 billion by 2015, and the country is implementing a cloud initiative as a key tenet of national economic strategy. Similar growth is predicted for India, where the cloud market is projected to grow to $3 billion by 2015 and create 100,000 jobs. Mr Kundra wrote: “As foreign governments prioritise investment in the cloud, the United States cannot hesitate because of hypothetical security threats that serve the entrenched interests of the IT cartel.” ❈ Practical as well as visionary, the New Delhi-born Mr Kundra pointed out that a critical issue of cloud computing is whether cloud data can and should ow between nations, and what restrictions should be placed upon that movement. In his view the next step is the creation of a global Cloud First policy that compels nations to work together on solutions. He noted that the US, together with the leading nations of Europe and Asia, has an opportunity to announce such an initiative at the World Economic Forum 2012 meeting set for 25 th -29 th January in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. Compelled or otherwise, the international unity of purpose outlined in the previous item faces some hurdles, to judge from recent ndings by the leading Canadian public policy think tank. Relations along the 3,987-mile border between Canada and “the lower 48" of the United States are not a worry to either neighbour. (Canada and the state of Alaska coexist, also peacefully, along a 1,538-mile border of their own.) But the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute did discern a rather jaundiced American view on Canada’s attentiveness to those interfaces. The results of a study published 10 th May by Fraser indicate that members of the US Congress see Canada as a stable and reliable source of energy, but they show little support for Canada-US trade and are concerned about what they perceive as lax border security. In its analysis of US congressional debates between 2001 and 2010 where the focus of discussion was Canada or Canadian policy, the institute found that, while Canadian policy on energy and the environment drew positive responses from American legislators, the same cannot be said for border security. In What Congress Thinks of Canada , Fraser noted persistent and repeated allegations by American senators and members of the House of Representatives that Canada was a way-station for some of the 9/11 plane hijackers and is still insu ciently rigorous about illicit narcotics and terrorism. “When discussing border security, American politicians tend most often to speak of the Canadian and Mexican borders in roughly the same manner,” wrote Alexander Moens, a co-author of the report. “Their concern about the threat of terrorists staging attacks from Canada remains high.” Dorothy Fabian – USA Editor Canada and the US A somewhat limp handshake across the world’s longest international border

“Public and private organisations that preserve the status quo of wasteful spending will be punished, while those that embrace the cloud will be rewarded with substantial savings and 21 st Century jobs.” An unabashed proponent of cloud computing, Vivek Kundra, the Obama administration’s chief information o cer from 2009 until this past August, was summing up a conviction that he was able to implement during his relatively brief time in government service. Mr Kundra laid out the “Cloud First” policy which requires US agencies to give priority to cloud computing services. Now, in an op-ed piece in the New York Times , he was urging his views on a broader constituency. (“Tight Budget? Look to the Cloud,” 30 th August). On his arrival in Washington Mr Kundra quickly perceived what he considered vast ine ciencies in the $80 billion federal IT budget. He also saw an opportunity to increase productivity and save money by embracing a shift from the hardware and software that IT users buy and maintain, to low-cost, maintenance-free services based on the Internet and run by private companies. In one “particularly egregious example of waste” cited by Mr Kundra, the US Defense Department last year pulled the plug on a personnel system devised by Northrop Grumman after spending approximately $850 million on it over 10 years. Another Washington newcomer, the keen amateur techie President Barack Obama, needed very little persuading to inaugurate “Cloud First,” which mandates the transition to the cloud of at least three projects for every federal agency by the summer of 2012. Some agencies, like the General Services Administration, which supplies products and communications to government o ces, quickly adopted cloud computing. The GSA has cut IT costs on things as simple as its email system by over 50%. But other agencies have baulked. The State Department, for instance, has raised concerns about whether the cloud approach introduces security risks, since data is stored o -site by private contractors. ❈ Mr Kundra, who has moved to Harvard University as a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Politics and Public Policy, refutes this objection. Cloud computing, he says, is often far more secure than traditional computing because companies like Google and Amazon can attract and retain cyber-security personnel of a higher quality than many governmental agencies. He noted that federal employees are so accustomed to using cloud services like Dropbox and Gmail in their personal lives that, even if their agencies do not formally permit cloud computing, they use it for work purposes anyway. This can create a “shadow IT” that leads to a more vulnerable organisation than would a properly overseen cloud computing system. ❈ Mr Kundra blames “the IT cartel” – a powerful group of private contractors that encourages reliance on ine cient software and hardware expensive to acquire and to maintain – for the waste by governments of billions of dollars on unnecessary information technology. Warning that the US cannot a ord to be left behind in the cloud computing revolution, he cited some pertinent Japanese and Indian statistics. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan estimates that the Japanese cloud computing market

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EuroWire – November 2011