As I have written here on several occasions the US Federal Government is providing leadership in moving to the cloud (e.g., What will be the Business Model for the Cloud as Data and Content Storage Becomes a Utility? and MIT Sloan CIO Symposium: Part Two: CIO Leadership and the Bottom Line). Recently, I spoke with Kevin Paschuck, VP Public Sector for RightNow and their CIO, Laef Olson.

RightNow provides a cloud-based CRM solution that I have covered before (see for example, RightNow Nov 08 Release Focuses on Call Center Agent Support and Barack Obama’s Answer Center – Campaign CRM from RightNow). They do a lot of work for a number of US Government agencies, with over 155 public sector clients.

In April they released a new, highly secure, defense-ready hosting solution designed to support both the Department of Defense (DoD) and other civilian government and intelligence agencies that require stringent, evolving levels of compliance and security. Because the DoD requires a strict level of security, RightNow’s new hosting capabilities use DITSCAP/DIACAP to ensure compliance with DoD Instruction 8500.2, meet US Federal security standard FISMA (NIST 800-53) and include a 24×7 dedicated security and information assurance team.

We spoke on how they are helping the government move further into the cloud with this offering. Kevin said that 70 percent of their government clients are using a cloud solution and this percentage is increasing. In contrast, all of their private sector clients are using a cloud solution. Now RightNow is working with their government clients to take the remaining 30 percent into the cloud.

There are several obstacles to overcome. First, a number of their government clients are military agencies and sensitive military data needs to run on the military network with a .mil extension. To do this the data must be hosted on a military base or you need to get a waiver. Second, there is the general government reluctance to go to the cloud for security reasons.

I asked Kevin how the current 70 percent of government clients are able to use the cloud. He said that many of these are for less sensitive data such as HR self-service of pubic information systems such as the AKO Army Knowledge Online site shown below.

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Many federal CIOs are anxious to get to the cloud to save money and get more flexibility. I observed this myself at the MIT Sloan where Elizabeth Hight, Rear Admiral, Vice Director Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), said she was a supporter of the cloud and virtualization to save both time and money. Kevin mentioned that RightNow is teaming with Elizabeth and DISA to host RightNow applications in their hosting center so they meet government regulations. This is one way they can meet the .mil requirement. Here is another RightNow application for the US Army Human Resources Command.

They have also covered 90 to 95 percent of the certification requirements that run across agencies so it takes less time to customize the application to meet the specifics of each agencies certification requirements. The government is also trying to standardize cloud issues. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a non-regulatory arm of the US Commerce Department, has helped by developing a draft definition for federal use of cloud computing. They may be a bit ahead of the private sector here. Here is a non-military RightNow application for the Social Security Agency.

In another example, the U.S. Air Force Personnel Center (AFPC) is moving its on premise RightNow solution to the new highly-secure, Department of Defense (DoD) SaaS solution.  With the new RightNow cloud-based application, more than 100 AFPC agents can provide accurate, up-to-date information across multiple touchpoints to military and civilian employees of the U.S. Air Force.

The system also provides the AFPC website with a self-learning knowledge foundation. In addition, it monitors constituent feedback, disseminates consistent information, and easily updates content to ensure relevancy. The application has reduced inbound email by guiding constituents to submit questions via the web, where it is converted into an incident that AFPC can track and respond to.

I am pleased to see greater government uptake on the opportunities the cloud brings. There seems to be a genuine drive to balance security requirements with flexibility, cost savings and reduce unnecessary red tape with standardization.