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Areas of Focus
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Agencies
- Department of Agriculture
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- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- National Science Foundation
- Office of Personnel Management
- Small Business Administration
- Social Security Administration
- U.S. Agency for International Development
Agency Snapshot:
Department of Agriculture The Department of Agriculture is the eighth largest Federal civilian agency in terms of IT spending with an IT budget in FY 2010 of about $2.6 billion. USDA's IT investments are focused on supporting the agency's mission to provide leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, and related issues based on sound public policy, the best available science, and efficient management. Major IT investments in FY 2010 include the Farm Service Agency's Farm Program Modernization; Rural Development's Comprehensive Loan Program; and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's Animal Disease Traceability Information System. In addition to working on improving investment management, USDA is working to streamline its IT operations and secure its communication and information assets. More information on achieving operational efficiency can be found in the 25-Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management.
Data Center Consolidation across Government
The number of Federal data centers rapidly grew from 432 in 1998 to nearly 2,100 in 2010. This trend conflicts with the proven private-sector best practice of consolidating and reducing the number of data centers to reduce IT infrastructure costs, real property expenditures, energy consumption, and environmental impacts. As a result, OMB launched the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI), which seeks to reduce the number of data centers the government owns, operates, and leases. These data centers – some as big as a football field, others as small as a closet – represent billions in wasted capital that could be better used to improve upon critical services for American taxpayers. By closing data centers, can save taxpayers billions of dollars by cutting spending on wasteful, underutilized hardware and software as well as enhancing our cybersecurity; shrinking our energy and real estate footprints; and taking advantage of transformational technologies like cloud computing to make government work better for the nation. Agencies spent FY10 creating comprehensive consolidation plans based on their unique mission needs; these plans outline consolidation work through FY15. Currently, agencies are executing their consolidation plans.
In December 2010, the Administration made data center consolidation a key tenet of the comprehensive 25-Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management. Under this plan, agencies will consolidate at least 800 data centers by FY15. After a year of agencies working hard to develop plans and targets, we are not only on track – but exceeding that goal. In late 2011, we announced that:
- Agencies plan to close 215 data centers in 2011;
- Agencies plan to close 525 data centers by the end of 2012; and
- Agencies plan to close 1,080 data centers by the end of 2015
Rather than stop there and call it a success that we’re on track to close 25% more data centers than our goal, the Administration is expanding its efforts. As a result, the FDCCI now includes data centers of all sizes rather than just those 500 square feet and above. And as we expand the FDCCI, we are also expanding our goal. Moving forward, the government’s goal will be to close at least 40% of identified data centers, consistent with our original consolidation goal outlined in the comprehensive 25-Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management. That means we’ll be looking to consolidate at least 1200 data centers by the end of 2015 – a goal that requires us to continue aggressively rooting out duplication and waste in our expanded baseline of 3,133 data centers.
Also hard at work is a government-wide Data Center Consolidation Task Force (Task Force) comprised of data center program managers, facilities managers, and the Federal sustainability community. The Task Force is addressing topics such as multi-tenant requirements, cost modeling, ways for agencies to share data center capacity, technical approaches to consolidation, how to use cloud computing to accelerate consolidation, acquisition modalities, and the coordination of the FDCCI with Federal real property and sustainability efforts. Additionally, the Task Force leads ongoing data center inventory validation and verification mechanisms to ensure the accuracy of agency inventory profiles and the successful execution of agency consolidation plans. Lastly, it continually shares best practices and lessons learned as agency consolidation efforts evolve.
While agencies continue to rack up closures and focus on consolidation opportunities to maximize savings, it’s equally important to focus on the efficiencies of the data centers that remain in our inventory. These data centers, which will take on additional work as we consolidate, will become the centerpieces of service delivery to American taxpayers. That is why the Task Force has begun to focus on the efficiencies of the data centers we keep. We need to ensure we are delivering better service to the American people for less. Accordingly, agencies will focus on computing power and density instead of capacity, taking advantage of current technologies that deliver the highest efficiencies.
The Department of Agriculture's Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative plan can be found here.
Cloud Computing
The Federal government is the world’s largest consumer of information technology, spending over $76 billion annually on more than 10,000 different systems. Fragmentation of systems, poor project execution and the drag of legacy technology have presented barriers to achieving the productivity and performance gains found when technology is deployed effectively in the private sectors. Cloud computing has the potential to greatly reduce waste, increase data center efficiency and utilization rates, and lower operating costs. Agencies are currently deploying cloud solutions and are expected with greater frequency moving forward to evaluate and deploy cloud-computing solutions to improve the delivery of IT services. The services identified by the Department of Commerce are:
| Service Name | Description | Complete by December 2011 | Complete by June 2012 |
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In 2008, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) was operating 21 different email systems across the agency, most with unique functionality, settings, and firewall settings. In order to achieve agency-wide efficiencies and provide a unified email platform, USDA is consolidating over 120,000 email inboxes to a single cloud solution. By moving to this solution, employees across USDA will now be able to collaborate through email, IM, web conferencing, and a global address list they did not have access to before. |
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Collaboration Services |
People everywhere use social media to network, begin new ideas, and be more productive. In order to harness the power of social media internally, USDA has deployed a cloud service called USDA Connect which provides tools such as Profiles, Wikis, Blogs, Communities, Activities, Files and Bookmarks. Currently, USDA has over 107,000 users actively using USDA Connect allowing USDA to reach new heights in inter-agency interaction, productivity, and efficiency. |
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Document Management and Correspondence Tracking |
USDA has over 20 different document and correspondence tracking systems across the agency, most with unique functionality, settings, and firewall settings. In an effort to eliminate redundancy and increase efficiency, USDA will consolidate over 20 systems to a single customer relationship management (CRM) environment in the cloud. By using cloud CRM software, USDA will be able to organize customer information and provide the means to track correspondence across offices and throughout the agency. |
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Migration to New Telecommunication Contracts
Rather than have every agency individually develop their own telecommunications contracts, the Federal government recently developed the Networx program to pool agencies' bargaining power. This government-wide acquisition vehicle offers agencies higher-quality, cheaper and more secure telecommunications services. Agencies are currently in the process of moving from their old telecommunication contracts to new Networx contracts. The metric here is an indicator of the agency's overall progress in migrating to new Networx telecommunications contracts by measuring the percentage of disconnect, with 100% being the target. Although an agency is not in complete control of this metric because it is dependent on a vendor's response to agency orders among other factors, we think the measure offers some insight into an agency's progress on migrating to the new telecommunications contracts.
