Technology

NEH CIO looking for cloud opportunities

The National Endowment for the Humanities doesn’t use cloud computing outside of a test environment currently but Brett Bobley, the agency’s chief i...

Federal News Network Staff

February 26, 2011 12:03 am

1 min read

The National Endowment for the Humanities doesn’t use cloud computing outside of a test environment currently but Brett Bobley, the agency’s chief information officer, is looking to change that.

He tells Federal News Radio one of his main priorities is pinpointing areas where the agency can use cloud computing to increase efficiency and save money.

Bobley says he thinks using the cloud for web hosting is a “no brainer.” He also thinks it’s smart to move email to the cloud.

“One of the nice things about email…not only can it save you money, it’s an excellent continuity of operations tool.”

But like many other agencies that are wading into the cloud pool, Bobley says security is a concern for him.

“We want to be very smart about moving into the cloud. As you can imagine, there are a lot of cloud vendors out there but only a few of them are getting FISMA compliant and are really accustomed to working with the government and the particular needs of the government. On the one hand, we recognize the value of the cloud and we’re very into the planning and testing process on this so we can move in smartly but, again, we want to make sure we do it right so we get a system that is as reliable, if not more reliable, than the one we have now.”

Listen to Federal News Radio’s complete interview with Bobley here.