Critical Update: Did COVID-19 Push More Agencies Into the Cloud?

The COVID-19 pandemic moved a lot of federal employees from agency offices to home offices this year, requiring remote, cloud services so they could keep doing their jobs. But the federal cloud journey has been slow and uneven—so, did COVID-19 actually push more cloud adoption across government?

The answer is, “probably,” “most likely,” “of course it did,” … “we think.”

For this episode of Critical Update, Nextgov spoke with analysts inside and outside of government about cloud migration spending in the wake of mass teleworking. Data—though woefully incomplete—shows an increase in spending year-over-year for most agencies. However, cloud spending has increased annually for the last five years and not all funding going to cloud services in 2020 is directly related to COVID-19.

But that doesn’t mean we’re entirely in the dark about what is going on. In this episode, Nextgov Senior Editor Aaron Boyd speaks with Maria Roat, acting deputy federal chief information officer; contracting experts Amber Hart and Lisa Mundt from The Pulse of GovCon; and Dave Hinchman, acting director of IT and cybersecurity at the Government Accountability Office.

They all come to the same conclusion: More agencies must be moving to the cloud this year. Right?

Listen to the full episode below or download from Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or your favorite platform.