Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative

The House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations hearing on the 9th version of the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard provided some interesting insights beyond the grades for each agency.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee will release the 8th Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard showing five agencies improving, five falling and 14 agencies holding steady.

Federal chief information officer Suzette Kent said in an exclusive interview that during her time leading federal technology she has learned the biggest areas agencies need to catch the private sector in is processes and people, but not technology.

Army Secretary Eric Fanning has issued highly detailed orders to three-and-four star generals in the Army’s headquarters and functional and geographic commands, telling them precisely what must be done to close 60 percent of the service’s 1,200 data centers by the end of 2018 and 75 percent by 2025.

During the first few years of the federal government’s effort to shut down expensive and underutilized data centers, the Army chalked up some early wins: more than 400 have been closed since 2010. But progress has slowed significantly in the last two years, so top officials are about to get a lot more prescriptive.

A third memo from the administration since 2009 is pushing agencies to consolidate, optimize and move data centers to the cloud.

Terry Halvorsen, the Defense Department’s chief information officer, now plans to be much more “prescriptive” about what each military service and DoD component must do to rein in their costs.

The Office of Management and Budget’s new draft policy recognizes the data center consolidation and optimization initiative must fold in several ongoing priorities — from infrastructure and systems modernization, to cybersecurity, cloud first, and the greening of the government — to be more effective.

The Defense Information Systems Agency believes it can save the military services big bucks on data storage, processing and communications by becoming a one-stop-shop for IT in the continental U.S. Under a new Pentagon plan, it’s the military’s only provider for large data centers.

The council is restructuring to match the Obama administration’s technology priorities for innovation, governance and cybersecurity. It will now operate with three main committees instead of five.