Keith Trippie, Executive Director of Enterprise System Development at the Department of Homeland Security, said in a panel discussion among federal CIOs at Cloud/Gov today that DHS plans on moving all non-sensitive content to the public cloud, and building a private cloud for everything else internally. “If i can find ways to be more efficient, and do things faster,” he said, “what can I do with the savings? I  can transfer that investment back into the business.” And that means focusing more of DHS’s IT investment on its mission.

At the core of DHS’ cloud needs is interoperability.  “Interop is a huge part of where we’re going,” Trippie said.  “Vendors with proprietary services aren’t going to do us any good. There are standards that are out there at the state and local levels and we need to work with those to share information.”