Wall Street Loses, Google Gains in Government, by Anne Laurent NextGov, September 30, 2008.

Despite the bailout blow-out, my mind has kept wandering all day to a Washington Post story about Google's new office, of all things. Finally, Bob Gourley, former chief technology officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, helped me understand why.

Laurent says that government agencies won't be spending on IT in the near future because, increasingly, IT is becoming a utility that can be outsourced and that there is already evidence that governments may outsource to Google.

Agencies already are moving. The Post highlights the District of Columbia, where CTO Vivek Kundra has employees using Google's spreadsheets, email, videos, maps, word processing and a wiki. Alabama has won many plaudits and imitators with its amazing mash-up of Google Maps, Virtual Alabama.

She links to these interesting stories, among others:

• Wall Street Crisis, Enterprise Technology and Cloud Computing by Bob Gourley
• The End of Corporate Computing, By Nicholas G. Carr
• Google Goes to Washington, Gearing Up to Put Its Stamp on Government by Kim Hart, Washington Post, September 29, 2008; D07