Think the Politico scandal is bad? Let me tell you about FedRAMP

How a government security program burns billions of dollars while making us less secure

This week's revelation that the federal government spent $8 million on Politico Pro subscriptions sparked justified outrage across social media. The farcical concept of paying millions for what amounts to a newsletter service perfectly encapsulates everything wrong with federal technology spending. But if you think that's bad, let me introduce you to something called FedRAMP—a bureaucratic leviathan that makes the Politico Pro scandal look like pocket change.

FedRAMP, or the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, was created in 2011 to standardize security assessment and authorization for cloud computing products across government agencies. The idea, at least on paper, was noble enough: create a "certify once, use many times" framework that would streamline cloud adoption while ensuring robust security standards. A cloud provider would go through FedRAMP's certification process once, and then any federal agency could use that provider's services without duplicating the security assessment.

That's the theory. But what does FedRAMP actually deliver? A false sense of security at an astronomical cost; both in terms of money and innovation. It represents everything wrong with how Washington approaches technology procurement.

FedRAMP's control baseline is essentially a snapshot of what government security experts thought was important in 2011, updated occasionally with the speed and agility of a tortoise swimming through molasses. Modern security threats? Cloud-native architectures? Zero trust? Sure, they've bolted on some requirements here and there, but the core framework remains stubbornly rooted in a world where "cloud" was still something you looked at in the sky.

Among many problems with FedRAMP is its obsession with "cloud agnostic" solutions. This misguided requirement forces agencies to avoid the most sophisticated, hardware-optimized solutions available in the market. In the age of AI, this becomes almost comical. Do we really expect companies that have invested billions in training proprietary large language models to simply hand over their secret sauce to satisfy FedRAMP's platform-agnostic checkbox? The result is that agencies end up with watered-down solutions that work everywhere but excel nowhere.

The procurement timeline has become so protracted that, almost as a law of physics, by the time any piece of software makes it through FedRAMP authorization and agency implementation, it's already obsolete. I've watched cutting-edge solutions age into legacy systems before they even hit production. It's like buying a new iPhone, waiting three or four years to open the box, and then wondering why it doesn't have the latest features.

Then there's the matter of FedRAMP's baseline requirements, which manage to simultaneously be too rigid and not specialized enough. Yes, the Department of Defense layers on additional requirements like Impact Level 6 controls for classified systems—as they should. But FedRAMP still forces every agency, from the Department of Interior to HHS, to start from the same byzantine baseline of controls. This creates a worst-of-both-worlds scenario: agencies with genuinely high security needs must pile on additional requirements anyway, while agencies with more modest needs are forced to comply with excessive controls that add cost without meaningful security benefits. It's like forcing everyone to buy a tank and then telling the military they need to add armor plating.

Why does this system persist? Follow the money—and more importantly, follow how it's distributed. The federal government has created a labyrinth of "Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity" (IDIQ) contract vehicles, where they essentially hand billion-dollar blank checks to massive contractors like Leidos and MITRE with vague directives to "handle the technical details." These companies then not only write the byzantine security requirements, but also conveniently position themselves as the gatekeepers who can help others navigate them—for a price, of course.

The result? A perfect circle of bureaucratic self-interest where the same contractors who craft impenetrable requirements get paid billions more to interpret them for others. Through GSA contract vehicles with opaque names like "Alliant 2" and "OASIS," these companies have built entire divisions dedicated to selling compliance services for the very maze they helped create. The lack of transparency is staggering—try finding a public record of exactly how these billions are being spent, and you'll quickly understand why this system continues to thrive. Kafka would be proud, if he wasn't too busy filling out his FedRAMP SSP templates.

The cost of this circus is staggering. A typical FedRAMP authorization easily runs into the millions of dollars, not counting the opportunity cost of delayed deployments and lost innovation. Small companies with groundbreaking solutions often can't even consider entering the federal market because they can't afford the entry fee. Instead, we end up with the usual suspects – large system integrators who have turned FedRAMP compliance into a profitable art form, even if their actual solutions are mediocre at best.

What's the alternative? The Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) already provides a perfectly adequate framework for agencies to assess and authorize systems based on their specific needs and risk profiles. The usual objection here is that we'll return to a world where technology providers waste time and money seeking separate certifications from every agency. But this argument collapses under basic scrutiny.

Consider this: When the Department of Defense—with its massive security apparatus and sophisticated threat models—authorizes a database system as secure, does anyone seriously believe the State Department needs to reinvent that wheel? We already have a working model for this kind of common-sense approach. Take encryption: When the NSA's world-class cryptographers certify AES-256 as secure for sensitive communications, other agencies don't rush to hire their own cryptography teams to double-check that math. They accept the assessment of the most qualified experts in government and move on.

This encryption model shows us exactly how a modern authorization system should work. Agencies with the deepest expertise in specific security domains would take the lead in their areas of competence. The NSA would handle cryptographic validation. The Defense Digital Service, with its track record of rapid security assessments, could evaluate cloud infrastructure. CISA could validate incident response capabilities. Each assessment would focus on actual security capabilities—not documentation gymnastics.

The path forward is clear: Replace FedRAMP with a lean framework that emphasizes real security outcomes over compliance checkboxes. Agencies could immediately accept authorizations from their peers, while maintaining the freedom to add specific controls only when mission-critical needs demand it. Commercial certifications like ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II would provide the baseline, with government-specific requirements layered on top only where absolutely necessary.

For continuous monitoring, we'd shift from monthly compliance reports to real-time security telemetry. Instead of reviewing static documentation, agencies would maintain live dashboards of system health, security incidents, and threat responses. This isn't theoretical—it's exactly how modern cloud providers already operate their security operations centers.

If you need proof of this failure, look no further than the SolarWinds hack, where Russian intelligence operators compromised thousands of government systems—all of which had pristine FedRAMP documentation. This, the recent hack of sensitive Department of Treasury systems by the Chinese, and many other incidents, show how our bureaucratic approach to security consistently fails to prevent actual threats. While government contractors were busy updating their System Security Plans, foreign adversaries were busy exploiting the gaps between our documentation and reality.

TLDR: FedRAMP has become a bureaucratic nightmare that impedes innovation while providing minimal real security value. We already have a better model in how the government handles encryption certification—let's apply that same common sense to cloud security instead of maintaining this parallel universe of outdated security theater.