The U.S. Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard is the official measure of progress for the 24 largest federal agencies in terms of how well they manage and modernize their IT portfolios. The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability published an updated version of the scorecard earlier this year, which added a new metric to the mix: cloud computing.
This new cloud metric presents challenges to many agencies, causing an “anticipated falter” in agency grades this year, according to FedScoop. The key issues faced are related to cloud security and compliance and standardized and efficient IT acquisition processes across diverse cloud services, not to mention maintaining up-to-date security measures and continuously monitoring IT environments. These requirements can be a lot to grapple with for any IT department.
The good news for federal agencies facing these many challenges is that FedRAMP offers a solution. FedRAMP, which stands for the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, is the U.S. federal government’s mandated security and privacy compliance program for Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and Cloud Service Offerings (CSOs).
Using FedRAMP-Authorized CSOs and creating FedRAMP-compliant service-level agreements (SLA) for CSPs helps agencies streamline their cloud adoption processes, maintain high security standards, and improve their overall IT management practices. Essentially, FedRAMP is your guide to cloud compliance, and better FITARA grades.
The overall aim with FITARA is to bolster the security and efficiency of the U.S. federal government’s IT operations, so that they can better serve U.S. citizens. The new cloud measures may present initial challenges to agencies (and lower their scores), but with guidance from FedRAMP, and support from FedRAMP authorized vendors like Pexip, federal agencies can get on the fast track to better FITARA grades and more importantly, more secure cloud products and services.