GSA launches FedRAMP dashboard

The General Services Administration officially launched Wednesday its anticipated dashboard for the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program.

The FedRAMP Marketplace dashboard lets users explore the status — ready, in process or authorized to operate — of different cloud service providers in the government’s cloud security assessment process.

The new dashboard has several usability features, such as the ability to search, sort, compare and download information on vendors, agencies and third-party assessment organizations taking part in the FedRAMP process.

FedRAMP Director Matt Goodrich said the dashboard came after many who took part in the FedRAMP process complained about the lack of information on CSPs’ progress and their ability to interact with it.

“The more deeply and varied you have begun to interact, the more information and functionality you’ve expressed you’d like to see,” Goodrich wrote in a GSA blog post. “We’ve responded by continuing to grow and segment the marketplace by introducing categories such as FedRAMP Ready and In-Process for our CSPs, identifying which agencies have authorized CSPs for use, and even which 3PAO assessed authorized CSPs. As we continued to introduce these new categories within the marketplace, our website didn’t always provide a graceful way for people to interact.”

GSA contracted work on the dashboard through its internal digital services team 18F’s agile blanket purchase agreement vehicle to Reston, Virginia-based TrueTandem LLC for about $150,000. The project was one of the first uses of 18F’s agile BPA — which pools together contractors vetted in agile software design to build tools in a rapid, iterative, incremental, and user-centered manner — and it went off without a hitch.

[Read more: 18F awards first agile task order — building a FedRAMP dashboard]

“Through an enjoyable procurement process (no seriously–it was actually fun at times!), we chose True Tandem LLC  as the vendor to help us build the dashboard,” Goodrich wrote. “We gave them a quick turnaround time frame of only 60 days, and not only did they build an awesome dashboard, but they built it in just 55 days!”

GSA’s FedRAMP office also recently introduced a new readiness template for cloud providers to show they are ready to start the federal cloud security certification process. These moves come as part of GSA’s move to introduce a bigger, better, faster FedRAMP process.