Anna Forrester
The General Services Administration has included cloud-based mobile applications as part of the offerings under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program in efforts to further boost government services, according to two IBM executives.
Dan Chenok, executive director of the IBM Center for the Business of Government, wrote in a piece published Monday with Andras Szakal, vice president and chief technology officer of IBM’s federal business, that the move works to link mobile and cloud capabilities.
Chenok and Szakal indicated that benefits to agencies include the secure management of devices, support for continuous monitoring, device integration under a single set of policies, device policy enforcement and threat detection functions.
“FedRAMP’s progress can drive the government to provide significantly enhanced services at greater speed, more focused on the needs of the user, and at lower cost,” they said.
The authors also recommend that GSA consider the promotion of mobile cloud services without data storage functions to ensure privacy, as well as a reduction in the costs to achieve an Authority to Operate, to further strengthen FedRAMP.
