USA.gov, Data.gov Take Flight to the Cloud

This article has been updated with new information from GSA

The General Services Administration has begun the process of moving its public Web presence to a unified cloud, according to a press release from CGI Federal, which won the $21 million five-year contract for the transition.

Among the cloud-bound sites is GSA's signature website USA.gov, a catchall for information about government citizen services that sees about 2 million unique visitors each month, CGI said. USA.gov is likely to grow significantly over the coming years as the government slashes its web presence and folds information from outdated and standalone sites into larger Web domains.

The transition also will include Data.gov, a repository for government-built datasets for researchers and developers of Web and mobile applications, CGI said.

USA.gov and Data.gov were both already housed in computer clouds, GSA Spokesman Robert Lesino said. This move will take those sites and others managed by the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative technologies into a single, unified cloud where upkeep and storage are fully managed by the cloud vendor rather than by the government, he said.

The move to a unified cloud may help GSA to stand up a governmentwide Application Programming Interface for Data.gov datasets, which would make it easier for Web and mobile applications to automatically collect newly updated data from the site, Lesino said. Officials have discussed building such an API but not made any decisions yet, he said.

GSA will join the Energy Department, the Federal Communications Commission and several other agencies that have recently moved some or all of their Web presence to the cloud. Officials expect to save about one-fourth of the government's $80 billion annual information technology budget by moving to cloud computing over the next five years. Websites only make up a small portion of the systems slated for the cloud but are generally considered low hanging fruit for a fast and easy move.

The GSA sites will be in a "moderate security" public cloud but only share space with other government data, Lesino said.

Security concerns have prompted officials to move many government systems to government-only clouds or so-called hybrid clouds that segregate government data from private-sector data. There are many fewer security concerns, however, about data that's already public by definition