The General Services Administration, which issued operating plans Tuesday for securing and monitoring cloud computing systems in the government, released a slide presentation and comments earlier today, explaining how the program will work. The information, captured during a presentation with reporters, was made available in the form of a video presentation released on YouTube.

The new program is known as the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, or FedRAMP. The program is part of a coordinated governmentwide effort to simplify the approval process for Web-based cloud computing services.

The idea behind the program is have services certified for one agency be generally available for use by all agencies. The services typically undergo a compliance review at each agency that often must be evaluated against a set of up to 300 controls.

GSA officials, including Matt Goodrich, FedRAMP Program Manager, Katie Lewin, Director, Cloud Computing Program at GSA, and Dave McClure, Associate Administrator, Citizen Services & Innovative Technologies, reviewed highlights of the program during a briefing with reporters. The presentation summarized what the program will mean for federal agencies and their contractors.

Certain cloud computing services, such as “infrastructure as a service” tools, that provide remote storage and networking, as well as email, and other common collaboration applications, are expected to be among the first services to reviewed when the program formally begins, in June.

More details are available about the FedRAMP project at FedRAMP.gov.