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cloud.gov

Expedited path to the cloud

Background

Reducing the compliance and labor burden of moving to the cloud

Running a typical web application in government takes a lot of technical and compliance work that can be labor-intensive and expensive.

Federal agencies that develop web-based services have to meet certain infrastructure and security compliance requirements. If they host those services in the cloud, they must go through a separate process to ensure the cloud services are also in compliance. This means that agency employees and contractors must give up time that could be used on critical services in order to manage infrastructure.

The new [FEC.gov] will save FEC approximately $1.2 million annually, reducing spend on internal systems the agency will retire once all the content can be moved over. I don’t have to buy servers anymore. - Alec Palmer, FEC’s Chief Information Officer on hosting the new FEC.gov on cloud.gov

Approach

Allowing developers to spend more time improving services and less time managing servers

18F built cloud.gov to address the specific needs of federal agencies wanting to move their web-based services to the cloud. It’s a government-customized hosting platform that takes care of technical infrastructure and security compliance requirements. Federal agency teams can use cloud.gov to get their websites and web applications up and running quickly. It has a Provisional Authority to Operate (P-ATO) at the Moderate impact level from the FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board, so agencies using cloud.gov will have a radically shortened path towards getting the necessary security authorizations.

Projects that use cloud.gov include Every Kid in a Park, College Scorecard, and FedRAMP Marketplace.

Agency partner

cloud.gov
See our work

cloud.gov
See the code on GitHub
- List and explanation of code repositories behind cloud.gov
Agency partners
- Department of Commerce
- Department of Education
- Department of the Interior
- Department of Justice
- Environmental Protection Agency
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
- Federal Election Commission
- General Services Administration
- Office of Management and Budget

Want to see if 18F can help your agency?

Related blog posts

See all posts about this project

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We recently worked with the cloud.gov team to update their public site, cloud.gov, to United States Web Design System 2. The USWDS provided concepts we were able to use to translate designs into code a lot faster and deliver higher fidelity results once we understood how to use them.

Read more about A token of our affection - A field guide to USWDS 2
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When Performance.gov re-launched on February 12, it became one of hopefully many websites to use the full suite of the Technology Transformation Services’ (TTS) products and services, from hosting to design.

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