The CIA‘s move to adopt commercial cloud computing technologies aims to get those tools directly into the hands of mission personnel and customers and have new products tailored to their goals, the agency’s chief information officer told the Potomac Officers Club Thursday.
Doug Wolfe, the CIA’s CIO and a 30-year agency veteran, told an audience of GovCon and federal executives in Falls Church, Va. the agency also seeks to build a flexible environment for personnel to get cloud tools as that commercial shift evolves.
“We see it as a game-changer for our mission, ” he said.
Wolfe’s appearance marked the start of the POC’s summer “CIO Speaker Series” of events focused on technology initiatives and innovation agendas at federal agencies.
Thursday’s event also was the first in the series’ “Innovation in Defense & Intelligence” portion, with part two scheduled for Aug. 6 in Falls Church with Defense Department CIO Terry Halvorsen lined up as the keynote speaker.
Wolfe also was a participant in a three-person panel discussion after his keynote address at Thursday’s event and sat alongside Teresa Carlson, head of Amazon Web Services‘ worldwide public sector business; and Catherine Cotell, director of incisive analysis at the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Carlson told the audience she views the intelligence community as among the leaders in government on innovation and said advancements in cloud technologies will continue to occur.
“Cloud is the new normal, we can’t fight gravity, ” she said.
Cotell said security remains the number one barrier in the IC’s efforts to adopt new technologies and offered a forecast on how agencies could deploy the tools going forward.
“The ‘Internet of Things’ is the next generation of how capabilities will go to individuals. The government will have to project what tools are needed in the future.”
