Los Angeles: 30,000 city employees moved to Gmail

October 27, 2009, Los Angeles Times report that “Los Angeles adopts Google e-mail system for 30,000 city employees”. The city of Los Angeles signed a 5-year $7.25 million deal with Google to move all their 30,000 city email accounts online to Gmail. As the blogger Evan VanDyk wrote on Slaw.ca, Los Angeles city council voted to become the largest city in the United States to rely entirely on Google’s gmail to run its e-mail system.

Some people are scared by this news, as the blogger Jon Lee who highlight on Govloop.com 7 aspects of Gmail.

We have to keep in mind that 97% of Google’s revenue comes from advertising sales. More and more companies like Google are handling private and public data. Among all the reasons: it’s cheap, it’s easy and it’s a legal gray area. NPR.org ask the following question on their article about LosAngeles concil moving to Gmail: what happens to your information when it travels into the cloud ?

On GovTech.com, Randi Levin (Los Angeles CTO) said there is a problem outstanding that must be resolved for Google Apps to be fully compliant with the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) requirements for data storage and security. She didn’t divulge publicly what the unresolved problem is. She said:

“The real issue here is the fact that the policies related to a lot of different areas in the government are not matching the technologies that are coming out. That is the core issue: The criminal justice requirements were never written with cloud computing in mind.”

[Image by RodneyRamsey on Flickr]