Treasury plans sweeping Web overhaul

The Treasury Department is moving its Treasury.gov official Web site to the cloud under a new contract announced today.

The new design for Treasury.gov will support greater communication, enable transparency and improve access. Additional features will be made available on the Treasury Web sites, including social networking, Web 2.0 capabilities, robust search options and multimedia resources.

The department awarded the Treasury.gov modernization project to a team led by Smartronix Inc. of Hollywood, Md., along with partners Synteractive, TMP Government and KPMG, according to a news release today.

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The Obama administration has been encouraging federal agencies to consider utilizing cloud computing to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Previously, federal Web sites—including USA.gov, Recovery.gov and Data.gov—have moved to the cloud. Cloud computing, also known as infrastructure-as-a-service, offers access to Internet-based computing resources on a  rental basis.

The Smartronix team intends to deploy Treasury.gov on the cloud using Amazon Web Services and Microsoft SharePoint, Smartronix said in the news release. The team also will modernize and move to the cloud two other Treasury Web sites, FinancialStability.gov and MakingHomeAffordable.gov.

Smartronix previously was contracted to support another federal Web site, Recovery.gov, which tracks spending under the 2009 economic stimulus law, and helped move it to a cloud operated by Amazon.

"Our goal is to help transform communications and collaboration across the Department of the Treasury and establish Treasury.gov, FinancialStability.gov, and MakingHomeAffordable.gov as the absolute leaders in Government 2.0 innovation," Smartronix Chief Technology Officer Robert Groat said in a statement.