Google Applications for the Government
On 26th of July Google launched a new series of Google Apps, very similar to those the Googlers love, but made after the special needs of the Government and the public sector in general. In this way, the federal government, the city of Los Angeles and the city of Orlando together helped in order for this initiative to come true.
The Google Applications is the first to receive the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), whose certification and accreditation comes from the U.S. General Services Administration. The Federal Information Security Management Act is U.S.’ federal government mean of protection and these rules apply to all the information systems in use by the government’s agencies.
The General Services Administration has checked the rapports of Google’s security control and decided to release the authorization to operate. They compared the security systems usually used by most of the government’s agencies and the result was that Google’s Apps are at least equal, if not even better that they have now. In this way, authorities realized that Google’s security features are very performing and they can use them with all the trust.
The Berkeley Lab is one of the members of the national laboratory system supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. Its job is to lead unclassified research across many scientific disciplines, under the management of University of California. Researchers from Berkeley’s Lab are usually collaborating with scientists and researchers all over the world, by emailing version upon of documents. For this, Berkeley Lab researchers have been using the Google Apps to share, view and edit documents, knowing that they are permanently working with the latest information.
In the future, Google has big plans with the Government. They want things to progress, in order to fulfill unique government requirements. The special applications from Google for the U.S. Government include Gmail and Calendar data in a unique system located in the continental United States, available only for the government customers. Google Apps for Government are now available to any federal, state or local government in the United States.
By using this system, which is one of the world’s best cloud computing systems, the government’s agencies will benefit of its advantages, such as a higher reliability and best-in-class disaster recovery. These benefits will create significant cost savings and will substantially improve the existing security systems.
An important characteristic of Google Apps is that they don’t any hardware or software to be installed and maintained, so the agencies can start other technology projects in their mission to serve the public.
