The systems architecture for using commercial clouds has served federal agencies well for nearly 20 years.

The cloud movement sparked innovation in the design and deployment of applications, but the exploding use of artificial intelligence calls for a new cloud architecture, suggests Anish Patel, the head of federal civilian at cloud services company Cloudflare.

“If we think about the next generation of services that are going to rely on AI, there’s really a need for a new architecture in that,” Patel said during Federal News Network’s Industry Exchange Cloud 2025. “And so, how does that public cloud architecture, evolve?”

AI compute demands necessitate cloud evolution

He said the principal reason for this need derives from the compute demands of AI.

“AI is really the first thing since the development of the computer that’s been revolutionary on that compute scale,” Patel said.

Developers are folding AI into applications, along with technologies such as post-quantum cryptography and blockchain. Until now, those elements weren’t typically part of digital services.

“But when you combine all those things now,” Patel said, “thinking about the speed of interaction and how reliant you are on a network that’s trusted and reliable becomes really critical.”

Therefore, the resulting architecture must distribute compute power closer to clusters of end users, rather than executing solely in a given commercial cloud.

“If you can bring both that compute and that internet power as close to the end user as possible, that’s game-changing for where the internet is and where AI applications are going,” Patel said. Otherwise, the sheer processor cycle demands of AI will cause performance problems evident to users.

Architecting a reliable cloud architecture for all users

In thinking about the next architecture, IT staffs must consider both their organizations’ own users and external constituents, customers and business partners. Patel noted that many agencies have workforces scattered throughout the country. The need for reliability and low latency equals that of external users.

With reduced workforces, agencies will need to increase that reliability because the paper-based, office visit and telephone options may cease to exist.

“What’s coming next isn’t just that digital services are generally available, and when it’s not, you can pick up the phone or go into an office,” Patel said. “It’s just to be expected that all services are digital, and that service has an uptime and reliability level greater than TikTok or Twitter.”

He added, “There is a new generation of architectural thinking that has to come along with a distributed architecture.”

Patel made the analogy of search. Early Internet search functions, characterized by services like Ask Jeeves, were slow. Google, he said, revolutionized that with instantaneous results.

Today, when using public-facing generative AI sites, users “see it thinking, and there’s a couple of seconds there of it processing, and then it spits out an answer.”

That’s OK for now, he said, but the next generation of AI-enabled digital services will need the same step-function increase in performance that occurred with search.

The distributed architecture also includes distributed data, Patel noted. He said this requires special attention to data sovereignty, privacy and transparency — and secure handling.

“I may be a U.S. citizen traveling overseas, needing access to certain information in a particular country,” he said. “Especially if I’m an agency who’s globally distributed or has people that are traveling all over the world, I want to be able to process my information in a way that adheres to U.S. laws and follows the FedRAMP standard.”

Planning for distributed cloud architecture? Start with your users

Instituting a distributed architecture starts at the application development stage, Patel said.

“You have to start building for where the users are, wherever they are, and adjust to the users’ expectations,” he said. Also important? Building “for the next generation of services that aren’t fully built yet.”

Use of a containerized microservices approach helps because it lets an organization modify or upgrade parts and pieces of an application much more easily than traditional development techniques.

Still, Patel said, until recently “if it was distributed, it was on the agency and the IT folks to come figure out a way to distribute that application, have a disaster recovery strategy, et cetera. If you’re doing that manually, it’s still a highly complicated process, and you still have this scenario where it becomes overwhelming for the IT organization.”

That’s where companies like Cloudflare come in, Patel said. Cloudflare has built a hyper-distributed network together with the services for organizations to use. The company pioneered the idea of easy-to-adopt security for the Hypertext Transport Protocol, so organizations could readily obtain HTTPS status.

“You can now build your applications once and distribute everywhere at the same time, all over the place, and you don’t have to think about it,” he said. “You’re essentially offloading the capabilities of that application, infrastructure and services to vendors who are designed to essentially distribute this across the globe.”

Ensuring FedRAMP compliance in hyper-distributed cloud environments

That raises the question of FedRAMP compliance, the need for which would appear to severely limit the physical facilities on which federal applications can execute. That in turn means federal customers can’t always access the range of cloud services available to commercial customers.

Patel said that, in supporting a mission to “build a better internet,” Cloudflare wants “to ensure that everybody gets the same internet.” Its solution is to build the FedRAMP standards into the architecture itself, so that distributed instances of an application inherit compliance that was built into the original version.

“That means,” he said, “if there’s new services that are offered — new capabilities — and you need to extend the services to be tightly controlled in a particular way to a particular geography, you have the full control to be able to do that.”

The control ensures an agency can maintain public trust in an application and adjust how distributed instances operate.

“You may have certain areas where certain applications that you just want distributed everywhere,” Patel said, “and you need it to just be available for the user as fast as possible.”

On the other hand, he added, “You may have some cases where it makes more sense to for the application to be highly centralized in particular way and be able to route it to the right location.”

For example, at a local clinic somewhere offering medical services to veterans, “you want to make sure, regardless of the Wi-Fi they may have or the device they may have, that experience is still secure but performant, so the veteran can get through the process.”  

Discover more articles and videos now on our Federal News Network’s Industry Exchange Cloud 2025.

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This content is provided by FEBA.

Over the years, few concerns have reached my ears and inbox more than those related to federal retirement.

Retirement, from a distance of years, to mid-career toilers, looks like a future Eden. The closer you get, though, the more you realize how much you need to plan for whatever paradise looks like to you. Planning encompasses both the financial and what-to-do components of your post-work life. Here we’re concentrating on the money side of retirement.

People experienced in retirement planning strongly emphasize the need to establish a plan. If the weekly breakfasts with other retired codgers get boring after a couple of months, you can simply do something else. But you’ll find the effects of financial decisions made carelessly much harder to rectify.

That’s why the Federal Employee Benefit Advisors (FEBA) recommends a structured planning process for retirement. It starts three months from your planned date.

At 90 days out, it’s time to take advantage of the resources the government offers to employees approaching retirement. Contact your agency’s human resources office and make sure they know and acknowledge the date you’ve chosen.

It’s also a good time to attend one of FEBA’s free federal retirement webinars. These free sessions will give you a great deal of insight into what’s ahead, based on the experience of many thousands of people who have gone ahead of you. The sessions elaborate on information the Office of Personnel Management offers online. OPM even has videos to help you with what to expect once you apply for retirement.

Among the most important 90-day-out steps: confirming your service computation date, known as your SCD, and your creditable service. It’s a mouthful, but these computations account for the details of your career, including military service, to come up with a net length of time of your federal service. That’s essentially the basis for your annuity pay.

Therefore, at this point you should also gather your own documentation, including your federal service summary, eligibility for health benefits and life insurance, and verification of sick leave balance. Don’t forget, accrued, unused sick leave adds to your service time for purposes of annuity determination.

Of course, with any federal process, you’ll have forms to fill out. If you are a Federal Employee Retirement Systems (FERS) employee, get SF 3017, “Application for Immediate Retirement.” Oldsters who joined under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) must use the SF 2801.

In reality, 90 days for all of this is last minute. Keep in mind it takes at least 90 days for OPM to calculate your final annuity amount, and is often longer. Things have slowed appreciably thanks to the recent 43-day government shutdown and reduced staffing throughout the government.

60 days: Nail down flight plan

You’ve spent lots of time gathering stuff and evenings at the desk filling out forms. This effort should have netted you the documents you need for filing out the retirement application itself.

An application package should include the application form, along with any relevant military paperwork, extra documents or forms your agency wants, plus, if applicable, court orders and even your marriage certificate if you plan on electing a survivor benefit.

Like many defined benefit pension plans, federal annuities come with a few choices. Namely, full survivor benefit, partial survivor benefit or no survivor benefit. They come with increasing monthly payments, on the theory that if your spouse outlives you, payments will continue until his or her death. But you’ll need the consent of your spouse if you choose anything but full survivor benefit. No surprising your spouse from the beyond.

After your annuity, the next most important decision concerns your Federal Health Benefits Plan provider. Basically, you must have five years of continuous coverage before retiring to qualify. As for the type of plan, as you did during working years, you’ll have to choose self, self-plus-one or family plan.

Also keep in mind that you’re eligible for FEHB coverage for life only if you never let it lapse. Once you’re out, you’re put for good. Keeping FEHB might be the wisest decision you can make. You can still switch providers during open seasons.

Given that your Thrift Savings Plan is likely to form a significant portion of your retirement income, now you should consider your TSP strategy.

The TSP offers several options for retirement withdrawals. You can find much of this information online. The basic decision is whether to stick with the TSP or roll your savings over into an IRA, or a 401(k) if you find private sector employment after leaving government. Some retirees opt for what’s known as a life annuity. You surrender your TSP to a provider that pays you a set amount for the rest of your life. This typically also includes a benefit plan for surviving spouses or other people you designate.

The 60-day window is also the point at which you should review your Federal Employees Group Life Insurance, or FEGLI. Everyone has a different situation, so you’ll need to choose whether to continue with full coverage and rising premiums, or with varying degrees of reduced and ever less inexpensive coverage.

As with FEHB, you need to be enrolled in FEGLI while employed to retain it in retirement.

Whichever route you take, you’ll need to put in a form, in this case SF 2818.

30 days: Detailed systems check

At a month before retirement, you might be sorting your desk knickknacks and finding a home for your potted cactus. Whiffs of retirement parties might drift by your ears.

But you still have things to do on the practical front. These mainly include making sure your forms have been received and are in process. Don’t take this for granted; after all, it’s paperwork tossed into the mysterious machinery of the government!

Also check your Leave and Earnings Statements (LES). You can also verify from OPM what to expect for any lump sum payout from unused vacation.

You still have time to update beneficiary forms, including the TSP-3, FEGLI SF-2823, unpaid compensation SF 1152 and FERS (SF-3102) and CSRS (SF-2080) for contributions refund. These forms might seem routine, but keep in mind that beneficiaries override what might be in your will. So, it’s an important step.

14 days out: Final countdown

With two weeks to go, take some time to confirm your retirement as spelled out in your SF-50 is in fact scheduled.

Also stay in close contact with your supervisor and colleagues. You’ve all got ongoing work, and you’ll want to make sure that part of your transition goes smoothly.

Yes, everything is online but you should also download and store on your own cloud account (and also print out if you’re even a bit paranoid) these documents: eOPF (official personnel folder), LES history, W2s, TSP statements, and any FEHB and FEGLI documentation. It’s probably worth retaining training and service history records,

Also prepare for a financial gap period. Actually two gap periods. The first occurs between retirement and the two to three months until OPM starts your estimated annuity payments. Then there’s a gap until OPM finally figures out your final annuity. This could take one to several more months. If you will have ended up receiving less than the full amount, you’ll receive back pay.

Retirement day: blast off to your new life

Having done the requisite preparations for your financial life, you can arrive at your last day of work with a light step. You’ll turn in your badges and your government-issued computer and any other gear.

As the days of post-retirement roll on, you’ll begin monthly TSP withdrawals. These are mandatory starting when you reach 73, or 75 for those born in 1960 or later. Review the many options for withdrawal.

Having your financial life in order will let you concentrate on the joys of retirement, unique to each individual. Expect moments of regret, or even the blues in the first few. This is normal. Just remember this: While you’ve left one phase of life, you’re launching a brand new one.

If you have questions about how to navigate your upcoming federal retirement, we urge you to join FEBA for their last free webinar of 2025:

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Amazon might be most known for how it has mastered the logistics of moving millions of items on the ground. But it’s also active in space, in a race to build out the next generation of enterprise communications capabilities.

Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper, has already put some 150 satellites into low earth orbit (LEO), according to its principal business development lead, Rich Pang. Leo’s goal, Pang said, is to “enable connecting folks who don’t have connectivity or who have poor connectivity.”

Operating at a height of about 600 kilometers, the satellites’ RF links “are easily done with small terminals and, because of that closeness to earth, [with] high throughput and low latency,” he said.

That includes enterprises, including the Defense Department and federal national security agencies.

“We know that the defense and national security apparatus is not a fixed force, it’s a mobile force,” Pang said. “It requires multi domain connectivity to ensure that airplanes, ships, trucks, command vehicles are always connected, not only in receiving information, but getting commands out to the field as well.”

He said Leo augments communications capabilities the military and national security components already have with “more resilient and secure connectivity to ensure they have that ability to connect all those operations regardless of which domain they operate in.”

Remote regions of the oceans where the Navy operates come to mind, but land areas also have connectivity gaps, or ground-based comms get knocked out.

“You can’t have guaranteed fiber connectivity or usual connectivity that you’re used to having back at home station,” Pang said. “It’s important to have very flexible types of comms that can respond rapidly to wherever they need to deploy forces.”

“I often think about our first responders, or disaster response customers that have multiple systems at any given time to ensure they have connectivity,” he added.

They already have their radios, microwave and cellular connections. Now, Pang said, “in the event any of those are taken down, they have to have satellite as a backup.”

Resilient, redundant                                 

The addition of LEO satellites, with their low latency relative to geosynchronous satellites, contribute to what Pang called next generation connectivity. It’s marked by resiliency because of the alternate pathways for data movement the satellites bring.

Optical links among the satellites themselves contribute to the resiliency, Pang said. Inter-satellite pathways “remove congestion from certain ground points [and] allow us to have multiple paths to move information … not only on the ground but in space as well.”

Rather than operate as a separate entity, the satellite comms integrate with terrestrial capabilities and, for that matter, to commercial computing clouds, Pang said.

To ensure compliance with customers’ security requirements, Pang said, Leo operates within “this private connectivity directly into the cloud services … for our customers who are seeking secure solutions.” He noted that some industries have security needs at least as rigorous as the FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) requirement of the government.

As a managed service, Pang said, Leo constantly optimizes itself to maintain maximum use of its available bandwidth.

“It’s got varying geometries. It’s got varying frequencies,” he said. “And so inherently, these types of capabilities also make it more secure in that it helps reduce interference, whether meaningful or unintended.”

Beyond that, the Leo satellites fit in with a general trend of internet protocol (IP) as the basis for all communications, whether voice or data. That is, the multiprotocol label switching gives way to IP and software-defined wide area networks.

“I think this opens up the aperture to incorporate a lot of different capabilities throughout the many domains [the DoD] operates and also shorten the timeline in which they get that information from sensors to processing centers to engagement vehicles,” Pang said.

Grand orchestration

Therein lies the importance of redundancy and resiliency, especially in austere or contested environments. Pang described those qualities as “not being locked into a single architecture, but rather having many choices, having alternative to getting your information where it needs to go.”

“Resiliency, in my mind, is creating a dynamic system that allows you to choose the best path to take when you’re moving information around,” he added.

Pang said the government has been working continuously on how to integrate disparate networks and applications at the terminal level, where they operate single apertures that work on multiple networks.” This requires “an orchestration of all those capabilities to build that resiliency into the broader architecture that the Defense Department is trying to deploy now.”

Signal interruption, for instance by weather or intentionally interfered with by adversaries, occur regularly in Defense and national security situations.

“The system is designed to always sense for interference, whether it’s intentional or not,” Pang said. “It’s sensing for weather interference. It’s sensing for intentional interference, so it always knows that it needs an alternate path.”

Sensing and rerouting happen automatically, he said. The system “always knows that if I have interference in a particular path, it knows to look for the alternative or the tertiary path. The system is designed to constantly be optimizing itself very rapidly to ensure that that interference is dealt with.”

Pang said the LEO satellites of Amazon strengthen an important link in the information-to-decision chain. Once data from various sources arrived where it’s needed, “there are a lot of fusion engines, whether they sit on premises, in the cloud or even at the tactical edge.”

Leo is concerned with the movement of the data to those fusion sites.

“Our play is getting information to where it needs to be, whether it’s at the tactical edge or back to a data center to be fused, processed and then redistributed,” Pang said. “As the transport layer, not only can we get all that information back, we can help redistribute that information very quickly to the tactical user, so that commanders can make decisions in a much shortened timeline.”

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