IT Reform at the Department of the Interior
Posted by Bernard Mazer
As a large and widely dispersed agency, the Department of the Interior has some unique challenges and opportunities when it comes to implementing the 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management. Six months in, we are very proud of the progress that we have made, and are excited about the next steps. The IT Reform Plan has provided a strong, unified framework for decision makers across the agency’s eight bureaus and offices to move together toward creating better, more efficient IT resources.
We currently manage 13 stand-alone email systems at DOI, a result of the dispersed nature of the agency and a legacy of piecemeal development of IT at the bureau level. We are in the process of consolidating these systems into a unified, cloud-based email service that will support 85,000 users across DOI. DOI.gov will also be moving to a cloud platform in order to better accommodate the five million visitors per year who use the site. Of course, both of these initiatives will lead to cost savings, but the cloud also promises better service, such as guaranteed 99.9% uptime for both projects.
We have already closed four data centers, and by the end of 2011 we will have closed 14 more. We are confident that this effort will save a substantial amount of money and improve performance. While this is great news, I am most excited about the environmental impact. By consolidating our data use, we will conserve electricity and reduce fossil fuel usage. As the agency tasked with the stewardship of our country’s natural resources, we are committed to conservation at every level, and IT is no different. Going forward, we plan to consolidate and streamline our data center usage wherever possible, using the 25 Point Plan and other agencies’ best practices research as models for implementation.
Our agency was an early adopter of the deep-dive TechStat review process. We officially incorporated our version of the TechStat model, called iStat, into our agency’s governance process in July 2010 and held our first agency-led session in October. As a result of that session, we took immediate action to turn around our Mineral Revenue Management Support System, improving the accuracy of cost and scheduling data on the investment and thus improving governance and reporting to the IT Dashboard. Based on our iStat experience, we were able to offer OMB an agency perspective as they developed training and materials for rolling out the TechStat model to the agency level this past spring. Going forward, we will continue to use iStat to effectively identify and correct performance issues to ensure DOI’s IT dollars are deriving the intended results.
While we have experienced some tremendous successes in only six months, all of us at DOI know that reforming Federal IT is a long-term process. I am resolute in my commitment to move toward full implementation of the plan. Our vision will be achieved through a major shift in our approach IT management—we are moving from a focus on the technology itself to a focus on the customer.
In the future:
- Customers will define their needs through a customer management function;
- Those needs will be translated into services and provided based on value to the customer; and
- Services will be delivered to the customer through an order fulfillment process.
A guiding principle of our IT Transformation effort is that bureau IT staff will be better positioned to support mission applications as a result of the IT Transformation.
Bernard Mazer is the Chief Information Officer at the Department of the Interior.
