The General Services Administration (GSA) attributes the FedRAMP program’s success to building a culture that prioritizes continuous improvement, and aims to continue program growth through its recently launched FedRAMP Agency Liaison Program.
“We look to our customers for ideas … [and] challenge on how to improve their customer experience, but also how can we improve the optimization process? How can we make it faster? How can we make it more efficient?” said Ashley Mahan, Director of Secure Cloud Portfolio and FedRAMP, during the Federal Executive Forum’s Secure Cloud Computing in Government 2020 webinar on July 7.
“And as a result of that we just launched the FedRAMP Agency Liaison Program, which is designed to transform the way that FedRAMP informs and collaborates with Federal agencies,” she said.
Rather than having engagements be a one-on-one process with an agency, or holding large training sessions, GSA began bringing in 30 liaisons from agencies. The liaisons were then provided with the resources, training, and collaboration space to work toward a unified understanding of the FedRAMP program. This method then allowed for the liaisons to take what they gained and bring it back to their respective agencies to train colleagues.
“This also starts a great group to provide us feedback regarding anything that we’re thinking about with the program or any shifts that we’re thinking about making,” Mahan added.
In the coming months, Mahan said that her office would like to continue to increase and improve stakeholder outreach, provide further guidance and clarity on initiatives, and redesign its digital presence, which includes redesigning FedRAMP.gov.
“We understand this authorization process can be complex and we want to be as simple as possible,” Mahan said.
