(Washington, D.C.) – Today Tom Schatz, President of Citizens Against Government Waste, issued a letter to West Virginia Chief Technology Officer Kyle Schafer, President of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, thanking him for the release of the group’s Cybersecurity Call to Action.  CAGW expressed support for NASCIO’s efforts to provide secure and reliable IT services, and offered to help eliminate waste and establish best practices for state governments.  The letter reads in part:

“State governments in particular are facing pressure to both cut costs and improve services and access to information.  While government at all levels has invested in technology with good intentions, unfortunately billions of tax dollars have been wasted on systems such as the IRS’s $7 billion tax systems modernization project and the FBI’s $1 billion Sentinel program.

“The current approach of the federal government is to move to cloud computing under the “Cloud First” campaign that has been adopted by the Obama administration.  U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra’s cloud computing strategy states that these systems can provide “highly reliable, innovative services quickly despite resource constraints,” but must be balanced with safety and security.

As noted in your Call to Action, the government must be vigilant about protecting data.

Federal and state agencies must carefully review the long-term impact of this new technology to ensure that it does not cost taxpayers more than the systems they replace or compromise security. 

“CAGW has undertaken an effort to ensure that government agencies at all levels adopt rigorous policies and principles for evaluating cloud computing proposals, especially in regard to security, reliability, and long-term cost of acquisition.  However, we are troubled about progress on these important issues due to questions raised by federal agencies in regard to the misrepresentation of a vendor’s certification under the Federal Information Security Management Act, the loss of cloud services for a period of six days at the Department of Energy, and strong concerns expressed by the Los Angeles Chief Technology Officer about difficulties in meeting security requirements for new cloud services in the city. 

“CAGW would like to work with NASCIO and other organizations that are concerned with cloud computing, so that this next, exciting stage of IT in government can deliver the security, reliability, and taxpayer savings that we believe can be achieved.  We are seeking best principles as used by state CIOs as part of our efforts to help establish guidelines for IT procurement at all levels of government, particularly in relation to the cloud, and would appreciate the opportunity to discuss this with you in further detail.  Thank you again for your efforts to address cybersecurity concerns on behalf of taxpayers.”

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.