Draft plans to consolidate data centers due this month

The plans are not just about consolidating data centers, but rationalizing IT, says CIO Richard Spires. Homeland Security

Plans to consolidate the more than 1,000 data centers scattered throughout the government will be finalized by the end of September, with the Office of Management and Budget providing guidance on how agencies should include funding in their fiscal 2012 budget requests to accomplish this, said the Homeland Security Department's chief information officer who is helping lead the effort.

In February, federal CIO Vivek Kundra announced a plan to centralize IT services for civilian agencies and to consolidate the 1,100 data centers throughout government. OMB asked agencies to submit an inventory of their data centers by May, which they have done, said Homeland Security Department CIO Richard Spires, who along with Treasury Department CIO Michael Duffy heads a group working to consolidate the huge data centers. OMB and the group are reviewing the information, he added.

Spires said the group has asked agencies to first draft a consolidation plan. "This needs to be specific to them, based upon their own mission sets and drivers," he said. "It's not just about consolidating data centers, but how you rationalize the IT infrastructure, how you utilize cloud services ."

The drafts are due by the end of June and a more detailed inventory that includes information such as the types of servers and processes in each center and the amount of power they consume must be submitted by the end of July. Where reasonable, agencies will evaluate applications running on servers to identify ways they could be downsized or eliminated, or what is called rationalized, Spires said. DHS, for example, is running 13 separate Microsoft Outlook programs to support the department's components. Spires wants to bring that down to a smaller number.

"Obviously, as you do consolidation planning, you want to look at major applications to figure out where it makes sense to rationalize," he said. "But it's hard enough to get your arms around the IT infrastructure. Getting this data correct is difficult."

Agencies inevitably will discover components of their own IT infrastructure that are underutilized, including entire data centers, as was the case at DHS, Spires said. Agencies might have to adjust their plans accordingly.

"It's just the nature of these large departments," he said. "We in the federal government have just not managed IT as well as we should have."

OMB will finalize consolidation plans for agencies in September, which will include technical roadmaps and targets for hardware, energy and cost efficiency. It also will release guidance for how agencies should align their fiscal 2012 budget requests to the plan.

Spires expects the amount of funds requested by individual agencies will vary, to be varied because some are further along in consolidating data centers than others. DHS is moving forward on its own consolidation , having received about $195 million in fiscal 2010 appropriations to continue migrating its 24 data centers to two megacenters. So far five data centers have been merged. The department will request more money in its fiscal 2012 budget, Spires said, although he declined to reveal how much.

"This doesn't happen for free," he said. "Once we're in, we'll save money, but the expense of migration is the hump to get over."