GSA considers new cloud support services effort

The General Services Administration is considering the practicality of an acquisition for support services as it creates a cloud portfolio to help agencies transition to the cloud.

GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies (OCIST) is looking to create a robust portfolio of cloud products, tools, platforms, and services to aid agencies as they migrate.

GSA has found the cloud transition’s main barriers to be acquisition, security, standards and interoperability, and data center consolidation. The Cloud First Policy has helped, as has the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FEDRamp). Now, OCSIT may expand the overall efforts by creating a cloud portfolio of products and services that can help agencies as they move to the cloud.

“No matter where an agency is on their journey to the cloud, OCSIT wants to be able to deliver a product or service that will help an agency get to the cloud faster, with less confusion, and avoid any errors along the way,” GSA wrote in a new request for information.

To accomplish that, GSA wants industry feedback about approaches to creating governmentwide programs to assist in agencies’ transition, the products and services necessary to make the program useful, how government and industry can partner, and the steps to start up the program.

GSA released the RFI Jan. 6. Responses are due by Feb. 3.