I do not mean this title in the way that many might mean it right now. I’m talking about cloud computing, and referring to yesterday’s New York Times Bits post, Now Even the Government Has an App Store. Obama’s CIO, Vivek Kundra announced yesterday on the Whitehouse Blog (The Blog), in an entry titled, “Streaming at 1:00: In the Cloud,” that
..we have launched Apps.gov to help continue the President’s initiative to lower the cost of government operations while driving innovation within government.
He continues in the next paragraph.
Apps.gov is an online storefront for federal agencies to quickly browse and purchase cloud-based IT services, for productivity, collaboration, and efficiency. Cloud computing is the next generation of IT in which data and applications will be housed centrally and accessible anywhere and anytime by a various devices (this is opposed to the current model where applications and most data is housed on individual devices). By consolidating available services, Apps.gov is a one-stop source for cloud services – an innovation that not only can change how IT operates, but also save taxpayer dollars in the process.
The site features Business Apps, Cloud IT Services, Productivity Apps, and Social Media Apps. Under Social Media, were the only apps that I found that were free. Categories include:
- Bookmarking/Sharing
- Display of Multimedia, Data, Maps
- Document Sharing on WebsitesIdea Generation/General Discussion
- In-depth Discussion Tools
- Livecasting
- Mashups
- Opinions and Product Reviews
- RSS and Other Syndicated Feeds
- Social Networks
- and more
I can’t help but wonder how all of those poor, career, two-more years to go, government works think about all of this.
I suspect that, just like in most work environments, they do not have a lot of choice.
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