In his last speech before taking the helm as the Pentagon’s Acting Chief Information Officer (CIO), Terry Halvorsen emphasized the importance of cost as the number one driver in IT decisions.
Halvorsen, who currently serves as the Navy’s CIO, oversaw the transition of the service’s public facing websites to the cloud via Amazon Web Services–a move that has seen decreases in cost every quarter since its implementation.
“The driver for the department was economics and will continue to be economics,” he said at an event for the Cloud Computing Caucus Advisory Group on Capitol Hill Tuesday.
The event, titled “Cyber Security in the Cloud,” centered around making the cloud safe for the government amid concerns about putting federal data in the hands of commercial providers. Halvorsen, however, had a different take on security.
“I don’t think the security issue is an issue. It’s just like everything else. It’s just another dimension of the problem. It’s not special,” he said.
Halvorsen said the biggest problem in transition for the Navy websites was changing the mindset of those who want to have their data right next to them on an in-house server.
“This is really, in my mind, about normal change management and getting people to understand it’s not that different,” he said.
Halvorsen was not totally dismissive of security concerns. He emphasized that the government’s security process for approving cloud vendors for its agencies, called FedRAMP, should become a national process, shared between the public and private sectors.
“We’ve got to raise the national bar a little more on security. That will come back to us in terms of money,” he said, explaining that shared standards will lower costs for providers to work with government because they will not need to pay for additional certifications.
“I don’t know if FedRAMP is the answer in the endgame. It’s a hell of a start,” he said.
Halvorsen further emphasized public-private cooperation in terms of research and design. Industry far outspends government on IT R&D, and the Pentagon, in particular, favors putting R&D toward war fighting.
“I think this is a time in our industry where we better get the industry-government partnership right. It is the only way we’re going to get this right for the nation,” he said.
The Pentagon confirmed Halvorsen’s appointment as acting CIO on May 14. He will replace Teri Takai, who served in the position for four years and resigned in late April. On May 16, the Pentagon released a formal statement, clarifying that the Halvorsen’s appointment did not mean he was guaranteed the job.
“Mr. Halvorsen will lead the DoD CIO organization until a permanent DoD CIO is selected by Secretary Hagel,” the Pentagon said in the statement.