Agencies ready 5-year infrastructure plans

The deadline is nearing for agencies to revise their five-year plans under the Information Technology Infrastructure Line of Business.

The Information Technology Infrastructure LOB promotes the consolidation of agency hardware and software and sharing of infrastructure services.

Agencies participating in the LOB submitted their original five-year plans in April. Now they are to file revised ones by the end of September, when they submit their budget documents to the Office of Management and Budget.

As the Bush administration prepares to leave office in five months, the LOB is poised to carry over, said Eric Won, the LOB's program manager, speaking at an event hosted by the American Council for Technology/Industry Advisory Council.

He described the initiative, one of the last lines of business to be created, as "nascent."

One task the agencies have is to document the convergence of various seemingly loosely connected IT mandates into a cohesive whole, Won said. The upgrade to IPv6, the reduction of the number of Internet gateways under the Trusted Internet Connections effort and several other projects are all related at the infrastructure level, he said.

"This is where we've been asked to weave them into one strategy," he said.

Won said that having agencies revisit their IT plans relatively frequently helps keep them current.

"It's not just machines that need to be refreshed," he said. "Architectures need to be refreshed."