LAPD Has Abandoned Plans to Migrate to Google's Cloud
December 23, 2011
By Monica Gleberman, Contributing Writer
For more than two years, the City of Los Angeles has been trying to move its police department to Google’s (News - Alert) hosted email and office application platform. However, the city said they will no longer be seeking to switch over their email saying that the service cannot meet certain FBI security requirements.
Currently, 13,000 law-enforcement employees use LAPD’s existing Novell (News - Alert) GroupWise Applications, while other city departments use Google Apps for Government cloud platform. It seems as if the 13,000 LAPD employees will have to endure their current service indefinitely now that plans have fallen through.
Google will still maintain LAPD’s GroupWise licenses for the entire term of the CSC (News - Alert) contract resulting in payments from Google of up to $350,00 per year. Google said they would reduce the amount it charges for the rest of the city’s use of Google Apps by $100,000.
Gerry Miller, LA’s Chief Legislative Analyst and Miguel Santana, Chief Administrative officer, said the contract amendment was necessary because the Google service could not meet the compliancy issues required by the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS).
“Although CSC does not have the technical ability to comply with the City’s security requirements, it should be noted that the DOJ (Department of Justice) requirements are not currently compatible with cloud computing,” the two wrote in a memo to council members.
The FBI currently has high standards for how its data is secured. The CJIS database is currently maintained by the FBI and is one of the world’s largest repositories of criminal history records and fingerprints. The security requirements include encryption of all data, both in transit and at rest, and FBI background checks on anyone who accesses the database.
City officials have expressed frustration over the deal falling through. LA CTO Randi Levin blasted Google and CSC for repeatedly committing to deadlines for implementing the security requirements, but failing to meet them. Google disagrees saying they still maintain that the LAPD’s security requirements were never part of the original contract and were introduced only after the migration to Google Apps were well under way.
Edited by Jennifer Russell