For Humans and Agencies: The cloud.gov Deprecation Policy

We want to talk about two crucial aspects of being a cloud provider: consistency and predictability. Consistency is the ability to do something the same way every time, and predictability means that you can count on it happening. When it comes to communicating changes about our platform, we believe we have been neither consistent nor predictable, and we’d like to talk about how we intend to change that.

As our first step, we are publishing a deprecation policy that outlines the steps we will take when we make important changes to the platform. You read it here. We recommend you take the time to read the specifics and understand how it impacts your business.

Consistency & Predictability

Over the years, as technologies have evolved, changed, and become obsolete, we’ve had to deprecate and remove several components from cloud.gov. Instead of following a set process for handling deprecation, we took a what do we do this time? approach. That led to inconsistent rollouts and confusion.

It’s time that we do better.

Regardless of what we change we make, we want to make sure that we are consistent in our communication, especially with timelines and support. That should help make transitions easier and let your team prepare for future changes.

Technologies will inevitably change, and that is why we want to provide transparency into our approach to deprecation as well. We understand that it’s fellow humans that depend on cloud.gov’s consistency to run their applications. With the consistency, we want to make sure we provide your team predictability you can count on.

We’re Here for You

We are committed to improving the user experience of government. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out at support@cloud.gov.

With regards,

The humans of cloud.gov