analyst, Gerry Miller, and its chief administrative officer,
Miguel Santana, determined that the Google service could
not be brought into compliance with the FBI’s Criminal
Justice Information Systems (CJIS).
The updated pact requires that Google pay up to
$350,000 per year to maintain the LAPD’s Group Wise
licenses for the term of the CSC contract. Google will also
substantially reduce the amount it charges for the rest of
the city’s use of Google Apps.
“Although CSC does not have the technical ability to
comply with the City’s security requirements, it should be
noted that the DOJ requirements are not currently compatible with cloud computing,” wrote Miller and Santana
in a memo to council members.
The CJIS database is one of the world’s largest repositories of criminal history records and fingerprints. Users
must meet a strict set of security requirements in order to
access the database.
The amendment doesn’t specify how Google and CSC
failed to comply with the requirements, though city officials have long expressed frustration about the project. For
instance, Los Angeles CTO Randi Levin a year ago blasted
Google and CSC for repeatedly failing to meet deadlines
for complying with security requirements.
In April, the Los Angeles Times reported that the city
was considering suing Google and CSC over their delay in
implementing the CJIS security requirements.
Google maintains that the LAPD’s security requirements were never part of the original contract and were
introduced only after the project was well underway.
In a statement, Google said: “We’re disappointed that
the City introduced requirements for the LAPD after the
contract was signed that are, in its own words, ‘currently
incompatible with cloud computing.’ We realize this
means the LAPD may not be joining the 17,000 other
City employees successfully using Google Apps. Even so,
Los Angeles taxpayers have already saved more than two
million dollars and the City expects to save millions more
in the years ahead.”
Peerstone Research CEO Jeff Gould said that Google’s
problems may be due to FBI requirements that all IT contractor
personnel pass a criminal background check and sign the FBI Se-
curity Addendum document. He theorized that European Union
laws could make it difficult to get Google Apps support workers
based in Europe to submit to FBI screening and fingerprinting.
Gould added that Google and CSC should have known what
the requirements were because the CJIS policy document was in
effect when the contract was signed.
Matthew Cain, an analyst at Gartner, said federal security requirements could pose similar problems for other cloud vendors.
“Most mega-vendors utilize some offshore resources for development and operational reasons.” u
LAPD Drops
Google Apps Plan
Los Angeles city officials determine that cloud
services can’t meet security requirements set for
accessing a key FBI database. By Jaikumar Vijayan
AFTER MORE than two years of work, the city of Los Angeles last month abandoned plans to migrate its police operations to Google’s hosted email and office applications because it says the service can’t meet FBI security requirements.
The city council last month voted to amend a 2009 contract
calling for Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) to undertake a
wholesale replacement of the city’s Group Wise email system with
Google’s email and collaboration services.
The amended pact cuts the Los Angeles Police Department
and its nearly 13,000 employees out of the project; other agencies
will continue the migration to Google Apps for Government.
The vote came last month after the city’s chief legislative
We’re disappointed that the City introduced requirements for the LAPD after the contract was
signed that are, in its own words, ‘currently incompatible with cloud computing.’ — GOOGLE STATEMENT
