Energy Department: Email consolidation

Reporter's Notebook

Energy Department: Email consolidation

The Energy Department is using the loan to migrate 18,560 mailboxes to the cloud.

Jason Miller@jmillerWFED

November 9, 2020 9:17 am

2 min read

This story is part of an exclusive look inside the projects funded by the Technology Modernization Fund. To see the other stories in this series, use the main navigation page.

Editor’s note: The Energy Department declined to answer questions for this report. This information is pulled from the Technology Modernization Fund website.

An update on the project:

The department originally requested and was allocated $15,217,096 to secure large-scale operational benefits and costs savings by completing the consolidation, upgrade, and migration effort for the 26 remaining on-premises systems. Due to the strong support for this project at all levels of the organization, several DOE components moved forward with migration efforts using internal funding identified following the TMF award, while DOE worked through a bid protest of the IT support services contract to be used for the larger migration effort, which was successfully adjudicated in favor of the department. DOE has also identified 2,201 mailboxes that are able to be decommissioned, rather than migrated, due to the elimination of secondary email systems and other efficiencies. In addition, two sites decided to self-fund their migrations in Spring 2020, allowing DOE to further reduce the funding needed from the TMF to complete the project. The revised project scope is to migrate 18,560 mailboxes to the cloud at a cost of $3,743,702.

What has Energy used the money from the TMF Board for?

Its total TMF award was for $3,743,702 and to date, $2,902,121.05 is spent. The first incremental transfer of $2,226,965 and second incremental transfer of $1,079,626 are complete, for a total of $3,306,591 transferred to the agency. Third transfer of $437,111 is in process. The agency has awarded initial contract actions.

Has Energy paid back any portion of the loans?

No data available

How much faster has the TMF loan enabled Energy to move with modernizing this project?

Without this funding, Energy would need to conduct the migration of the remaining systems using a piecemeal approach subject to fund availability. However, with support from the TMF the project can be conducted as a single effort and can be completed in three years. By the end of this project the department will have migrated all on-premises email systems to a cloud email software-as-a-service solution. Energy anticipates it will have a greater ability to serve its mission more quickly across sites and capabilities, which will positively impact the American people. The operational benefits of this project include cost savings, increased efficiency, improved cyber posture, and decreased operational risk.

The identification of additional internal funds allowed Energy to continue making progress on the goals of the original project scope during the adjudication of the bid protest. The department will still achieve the full benefits of the original TMF proposal through the use of internal funds and the reduced TMF allocation, and the scope change makes available TMF resources that can be reallocated to additional project proposals.