FCW Forum: Do feds need more than 50 Internet links?

Altogether, federal agencies have more than 1,000 connections to the public Internet. But now, in the interest of security, officials at the Office of Management and Budget would like to reduce that to perhaps 50.

"The reduction of access points to trusted Internet connections will improve our situational awareness and allow us to address potential threats in an expedited and efficient manner," said Karen Evans, OMB's administrator for e-government and information technology. "While we optimize and improve our security, it is also our goal to minimize overall operating costs for services through economies of scale."

FCW's article (read it here) quickly triggered a handful of letters to the editor, most of which warned about unintended consequences of OMB's initiative. Both teleworkers ("Closing Internet links will lead to more unauthorized telecommuting") and satellite offices ("Closing Internet links will hurt satellite offices") would suffer, several readers said. Another suggested that the policy could hamstring some research and development efforts ("Closing off Internet links will hurt R&D").

What other ramifications do you foresee? And how do you weigh those problems against the potential security benefits? Let us know what you think. Paste a comment in the box below (registration required), or send your comment to letters@fcw.com (subject line: Blog comment) and we'll post it.

Posted on Dec 04, 2007 at 9:14 AM