About the Federal Cloud Computing Initiative

The FCCI focuses on helping the government implement cloud computing solutions for the Federal Government that increase operational efficiencies, optimize common services and solutions across organizational boundaries and enable transparent, collaborative and participatory government. The FCCI focuses on developing best practices guidance, contract vehicles, and communication tools that help agencies more effectively adopt, implement, and manage cloud computing solutions.

The adoption of safe, secure cloud computing in the government presents an opportunity to close the IT performance gap between the public and private sectors. The FCCI helps agencies improve access to modern technology needs faster and with lower costs, allowing agencies to pay only for the resources they use in response to high and low demand, avoid the expenses of building and maintaining an IT infrastructure, and control the appropriate level of security for data and applications. Also, cloud computing is a key technology for achieving & enabling cost effective data center consolidation, an area identified as a key federal priority.

The work of FCCI has furthered the government's ability to quickly and effectively acquire and implement cloud computing services, saving agencies time, effort, and crucial funding. The average IT acquisition takes months or years, and can cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to complete. With the FCCI's pre-competed acquisition solutions, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Email as a Service (EaaS) capabilities can be rapidly acquired, provisioned, and implemented.

The FCCI manages several key efforts that further the government’s push towards an optimized IT infrastructure. These efforts include program management and operational support for the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP).

The FDCCI is the federal government’s primary source for collaboration across agency lines regarding data center consolidation requirements, sustainable data center facility management, and other topics necessary to facilitate this aggressive and necessary effort. The FDCCI is responsible for accepting and analyzing agency data center consolidation reports, as well as facilitating, enabling, and ensuring the closures of agency data centers en route to 962 total closures by 2015 government-wide.

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) is a government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services. This approach uses a “do once, use many times” framework that saves cost, time, and staff required to conduct redundant agency security assessments.