“While the move to mass telework in response to COVID-19 might have come rather suddenly for most of the nation, federal agencies such as the Small Business Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services were able to quickly pivot due to prior efforts in moving to the cloud.”
“’On the surface, it looks like it was just automatic, but if we hadn’t done the hard work before that, it probably would have been a failure,’ said SBA Deputy CIO Guy Cavallo during an FCW Cloud Summit virtual panel discussion Wednesday.”
“Since the agency backs some measures from the government’s coronavirus relief bill, including the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL), Cavallo’s team had to build new input portals ‘in a matter of days,’ he said.”
“Because they were already in the cloud, the team was able to complete the project in less than eight days with all of the necessary security protocols in place…”
“For HHS Office of Inspector General CIO Chris Chilbert, cloud computing also enabled his team to adapt and pivot remotely quickly. The agency recognized several years ago that increased mobility allows auditors in the field to better perform their duties, which led to an increased focus on cloud services…”
“The agency is working closely with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which makes up about 80% of its oversight workload, Chilbert said, adding that CMS has ‘done a lot of work’ to help move data to digital cloud platforms…” Read the full article here.
Source: Cloud’s Role in Mass Transition to Telework Amid Pandemic – By Faith Ryan, June 18, 2020. GovernmentCIO.
