U.S. General Services Administration is going Google

(Cross-posted on the Google Enterprise Blog)

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) today announced its decision to move 17,000 employees and contractors to Google Apps for Government. GSA oversees the business of the U.S. federal government, providing real estate and building management services as well as acquisition and procurement assistance to other federal agencies.

GSA’s decision to switch to Google Apps resulted from a competitive request for proposal (RFP) process that took place over the past six months, during which the agency evaluated multiple proposals for replacing their existing on-premises email system. GSA selected Google partner Unisys as the prime contractor to migrate all employees in 17 locations around the world to an integrated, flexible and robust email and collaboration service in 2011.

By making this switch, GSA will benefit in a number of ways. Modern email and collaboration tools will help make employees more efficient and effective. Google Apps will bring GSA a continual stream of new and innovative features, helping the agency keep pace with advances in technology in the years ahead. And taxpayers will benefit too—by reducing the burden of in-house maintenance and eliminating the need to replace hardware to host its email systems, GSA expects to lower costs by 50 percent over the next five years.

Earlier this year, Google Apps became the first suite of cloud computing email and collaboration applications to receive Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification, enabling agencies to compare the security features of Google Apps to that of existing systems.

GSA is leading the way in embracing the federal government’s “cloud first” policy, under which agencies should opt for hosted applications when secure, reliable, cost-effective options are available. We are thrilled that GSA has chosen to move to the cloud with Google and look forward to expanding our productive partnership with them.

Posted by Mike Bradshaw, Director, Federal Enterprise team