It’s no secret that FedRAMP approval for government IT vendors has been anything but easy. In March, the Government Services Administration (GSA) said it would be working through ways to streamline the approval process and get rid of backlogs.
The FedRAMP Program Management Office said in a statement that it will be revamping FedRAMP Ready to include a FedRAMP Readiness Capabilities Assessment. The goal of the assessment is to allow vendors to demonstrate their capabilities faster through an assessment by a Third Party Assessment Organization (3PAO) rather than through documentation reviews.
GSA is currently soliciting industry comments on this idea. Those comments are due by the end of this month.
In addition to third-party assessors, Unisys has been tapped to participate in a pilot program for accelerated FedRAMP certification. The company’s Service Management Government Cloud offering will be included in a pilot program alongside two other cloud services providers – including Microsoft.
The FedRAMP Accelerated project aims to reduce authorization timeframes from the current range of six to 18 months down to less than six. Unisys says its Service Management Government Cloud offering has passed through an initial FedRAMP security assessment and is now undergoing more detailed reviews. Unisys expects that process to be completed more quickly as a result of its acceptance into the FedRAMP Accelerated pilot program with completion expected in July 2016.
If successful, the project could be expanded to the full slate of companies waiting for FedRAMP approval.
