| | November 20158CIOReviewCloud Computing Advances FDA's Mission and Drives InnovationBy Todd Simpson, CIO, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)Cloud-based computing is creat-ing opportunities at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for aligning our strate-gic goals, innovation and customer service so we can take information technology to the next level.Our mission is vast. FDA regulates, among other things, food, cosmetics, die-tary supplements, electronic products that give off radiation, human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and biological products, medical devices, and tobacco products. We oversee products worth more than $2 trillion a year. We're also entrusted with advancing public health by helping to speed product innovations. Through cloud computing, we can pool our resources in our drive to protect and promote the public health.In pursuit of these goals, FDA is transforming its IT op-erations into a service-based approach by developing a hybrid cloud model. This fee-for-service arrangement with FDA's nine centers and offices is possible because infrastructure and plat-form are available as services in the cloud. As part of the Of-fice of Management and Budget mandate, FDA is committed to a "cloud first" approach to consolidate activi-ties and reduce hardware footprint. FDA would like to leverage cloud-oriented in-frastructures to reduce IT spending by us-ing a consumption-based cost model and improve accessibility and flexibility. The goal is to expand the use of cloud-based platforms and eliminate duplicative and redundant capabilities. This will allow us to deliver IT support services in a timely, innovative and cost-effective manner with high quality.FDA is commissioning various cloud environments to enable modern, secure, accessible and cost-effective capabilities. This cloud initiative program aligns with FDA's strategic objectives to advance support for its mission and to provi-sion infrastructure for FDA applications, deploy applications and enable data shar-ing across the enterprise. One effort is to setup a hybrid cloud environment. FDA's hybrid cloud model includes three fundamental elements: cloud Bro-kerage environment, Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service (PaaS). This three-tier model allows FDA's Of-fice of Information Management and Technology (OIMT) to offer a service in which our customers can choose services and options that best fit their needs and budget. Let's say a center needs a database to track drug safety. If the database holds sensitive data and needs to be accessed by FDA employees (those inside the firewall), the on-site option might be best, and OIMT could support that. Conversely, if it's a database with external dependencies and low to moderate data, the cloud might be a better option.The cloud will also allow our customers to quickly develop and publish web and mo-bile applications. We have recently made a multi-million-dollar investment into a PaaS, and FDA's Center for Devices and Radio-logical Health and Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutri-tion have begun piloting appli-cation development and hosting IN MY OPINION
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