Agencies Could Save Nearly $6 Billion From IT Consolidation
Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel has said his PortfolioStat program will save billions of dollars. House subcommittee on Oversight and Reform
By
Joseph Marks
The savings estimate from a government auditor is more than double the White House’s figure.
There are about 200 opportunities for federal agencies to consolidate information technology services that could add up to $5.8 billion in savings by the end of 2015, according to a report released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office.
That’s more than double the $2.5 billion in potential savings federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel has said would come from his program to overhaul and consolidate agencies’ IT portfolios known as PortfolioStat.
The GAO report criticized agencies for failing to plan adequately to consolidate their IT portfolios and for failing to report sufficiently on those plans to the White House.
VanRoekel revamped the 20-month old PortfolioStat program in March.
During its first year, PortfolioStat focused primarily on changing how federal agencies purchase IT commodities such as Internet and mobile phone service. During its second year, the program is expanding to focus on streamlining technology operations and ensuring agency-level CIOs have sufficient authority, VanRoekel said.
Version two of PortfolioStat also rolls in the government’s four-year-old data center consolidation initiative and refocuses that project on making data center operations cheaper and more energy efficient rather than simply shuttering as many data centers as possible.
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