Moving Government Data (and jobs) Offshore

GAO ^ | October 17, 2011 | GAO

[In Maryland]

Decision - Matter of: Technosource Information Systems, LLC; TrueTandem, LLC

Finally, our Office also held a hearing in this protest. During the hearing, we again requested that GSA explain the basis for its data center location requirements. In response, GSA repeated that the solicitation had originally limited data center locations to the continental United States, but that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the USTR [United States Trade Representative]considered the limitation restrictive of trade, and advised GSA to permit data centers located in foreign countries. Transcript at 13-14. During the hearing, the contracting officer testified that GSA expressed its view that allowing data centers located in foreign countries was unnecessary under applicable trade agreements, specifically the Trade Agreements Act (TAA), 19 U.S.C. sect. 2512, et seq., but that OMB and the USTR nonetheless wanted to expand the requirements to data centers located outside the U.S.

[In Maryland]

I know this is a rather specialized government document - but it reveals the enormous hypocrisy of the Obama administration that claims to be in favour of American jobs, but is FORCING goverment agencies to allow government data centers to be located in foreign countries. Outrageous from both a privacy and jobs perspective, IMHO.

[bamahead]

Not to mention that right now there is a ton of empty/unused Data Center space on US soil right now that could be had on the cheap...along with the staff to run it....thanks to the Obamaconomy. Thanks for posting this. Im sending it to several out of work IT Engineers who voted for Obama, post haste.

Tech ping.

[bamahead]

Not to mention that right now there is a ton of empty/unused Data Center space on US soil right now that could be had on the cheap...along with the staff to run it....thanks to the Obamaconomy. Thanks for posting this. Im sending it to several out of work IT Engineers who voted for Obama, post haste.

Tech ping.

[In Maryland]

The truth shall set us free!

[ShadowAce]

[asinclair]

This absolutely blows my mind. It's clear that the GAO has no competent experienced network people advising them in these matters...or the GAO decided to ignore them.

Hosting CONUS data, intended for consumption in CONUS workstations, outside of the CONUS is irresponsible for the following reasons:

• Reliability of off-CONUS routing: I deal all the time with problems with performance of out-of-CONUS connections every day. I get complaints "I can cannot connect to you" but when I analyze the link from them to us I find the problem is almost always closer to them, if not directly in their uplink. Routers so overloaded they can't pass data without losing a bunch of packets. Links oversubscribed to the point that packets "fall off" the queue.
• Speed of off-CONUS routing: 186,000 miles per second is not only a good idea, it's the law. Unfortunately, signals don't pass through wire or fiber at exactly the speed of light, but at some large fraction of the speed. That's why connections from the US to India can experience round-trip delays exceeding 700 milliseconds, or more if any of the 25 routers have unusually large amounts of traffic. These delays mean the cloud-based applications will crawl, making it unlikely that agencies who have a lot of work to do will stick with the cloud. (Think of DMV slow, and you get the idea.)
• Security of off-CONUS storage: This was mentioned in the original article. Consider this, though. I run my own mail server because I don't want any LEO to be able to subpoena anyone for my mail, except me. The decisions coming from US courts erodes privacy in significant ways. (I was a third party to such a subpoena, and under a gag order about it to boot.) Consider what happens when YOUR data is stored overseas -- are you that confident that non-US governments are so stable that your personal data is safe?
• Effect on intercontential transmission links: Can you imagine the effect on traffic volume on an overseas link if you have EVERY SINGLE FEDERAL EMPLOYEE generating traffic on that link? Even if the cloud computing awards are spread widely geographically, you will still put a huge load on the few links we have. And satellite links just make it worse, as bits have to go to geosynchronous orbit and back. That speed limit again.
• The cost of private dedicated links that cross oceans are not insignificant. Such costs would need to be included in any bid from an off-shore applicant. I don't see any mention of such a requirement.

So, in my mind, these are excellent technical reasons to require cloud data centers be restricted to the continental United States (CONUS).

[In Maryland]

Thanks for the post. I'm not at all conversant with all the details of transmission, but enforcing security IN CONUS is a nightmare as it is - outside CONUS - forget it.

And, of course, I'm sure they have never thought about the fact that the systems that access the cloud are, no doubt, connected to other systems - might as well put a sign out: "Please Hack us Here!".