GSA moves e-mail to the cloud.

• Position: CLOUD - General Services Administration - Brief article

Contractors said they have moved all 17,000 General Services Administration (GSA) employees to a professional version of Gmail, making GSA the first of 15 federal agencies to move to cloud-based e-mail, Nextgov.com said.

Employees can access Geogle Apps for Government anywhere and from any device. GSA officials said the $6.7-million project would cut costs by half over the five-year contract period by reducing equipment and staff needs, according to Nextgov.com.

Unisys, which led the project, said the GSA deployment exceeds the data protection requirements implemented by the 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act by providing two-factor authentication. According to Nextgov.com, the sign-in process requires a password and a second piece of identifying information.

Unisys said it had to transfer 60 terabytes of data, or about 30,000 million typewritten pages, for GSA, which...