The draft roadmap defines requirements for interoperability and security standards, official guidance, and technology developments that need to be met in order for agencies to securely migrate their existing IT systems to the cloud computing model.
“A key contribution of the roadmap effort is to focus the discussion to achieve a clear understanding between the government and private sector, particularly on the specific technical steps needed to move federal IT from its current early-cloud state to a cloud-based foundation, as envisioned in the U.S. Federal Cloud Computing Strategy", said Dawn Leaf, senior advisor for cloud computing at NIST.
NIST plans to issue the final roadmap as a three-volume work. The first two volumes were released this week.
Volume I provides an overview of the roadmap initiative, including prioritized interoperability, portability, and security requirements that must be met; standards, guidelines, and technology that must be in place to satisfy these requirements; and a list of priority action plans recommended for voluntary self-tasking by the cloud stakeholder community.
Volume II is a technical reference manual that is useful for those working on strategic and tactical cloud computing initiatives – whether they work in government agencies or not. It integrates and summarizes the work completed to date, explains the assessment findings based on this work, and how these findings support the roadmap.
The third volume is under development as part of an interagency and public working group effort. It is intended as a guide for decision makers who are planning and implementing cloud computing.
Volumes I and II of the roadmap can be retrieved, along with other cloud publications, at www.nist.gov/itl/cloud/index.cfm. Comments on the first two volumes are due Dec. 2. Electronic comments should be sent to ccroadmap.comments@nist.gov and written ones can be mailed to Robert Bohn, NIST, 100 Bureau Dr., Stop 2000, Gaithersburg, MD 20899-2000.