Google’s announced Monday their array of cloud computing applications is the first to be certified by the General Services Administration as meeting federal cybersecurity standards. Google’s certification is “something other agencies could look to, but not that they could use,” GSA spokeswoman Sahar Wali said. Specifically, other agencies could adopt the language used in GSA’s certification of Google, but they would still have to conduct their own negotiations with the company and prepare their own certification documents, Wali said.

Google Apps  like Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar all all under the cloud computing standards approved by GSA chief information officer Casey Coleman.  The 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) will now be a standard for such cloud hosting applications.

What they don’t mention is that the certification will only cover the use of Google Apps within GSA.   Google officials believe it will give the company a leg up in the race to move federal networks at other agencies into the cloud.  “We see this really as a green light for agencies to move forward with cloud computing,” David Mihalchik, head of business development for Google’s federal team, said Tuesday in an interview. “Given the leadership role GSA plays … we fully expect that other agencies will leverage this certification.”

These new “Certified Cloud Computing Standards” will speed adoption of cloud computing by allowing agencies to piggyback on each other’s cloud-related FISMA certifications. Existing certifications would give companies a head start once Fedramp is up and running.