Requiring an economic assessment before the purchase of any third-party, commercial cloud computing service.

SB 6281 requires Washington state agencies to conduct a detailed economic assessment before purchasing any commercial cloud computing service for their data. The assessment must analyze all deployment options (public cloud, private cloud, hybrid, or on-premises), including full lifecycle costs (maintenance, data migration, security vulnerabilities), service needs, outage recovery speed, cybersecurity compliance, and hybrid environment availability. Agencies must submit this assessment to the Office of Financial Management for approval at least 30 days prior to procurement, ensuring taxpayer dollars are used efficiently. The bill applies to state agencies but exempts institutions of higher education and allows waivers for specific service requirements.