December 17, 2001 [Number 221]     Printable version (379k PDF)

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DHHS-Mandated Inventory of Information Technology Assets

In late September 2001, DHHS Secretary Tommy Thompson asked all operating divisions of the department to provide an inventory of all information technology (IT) assets by December 5, 2001. For this inventory, IT assets are defined as any NIH-owned network connected device, including personal computers, printers and servers.

To accomplish this inventory, DHHS specified that Peregrine Systems’s InfraTools Network Discovery (IND) devices and AssetCenter be used to identify IT assets attached to networks, correlate information gathered, and provide reports to NIH and DHHS.

The IT inventory has two parts.

• Scans of IT Assets

IND devices scan specified network subnets in a controlled fashion and collect a small amount of data from each "asset" attached to the network and powered on. The devices collect the IP address and MAC address from each node (i.e., each desktop computer, each printer, each server). Next, an inquiry is sent to nodes to find out if Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is running. If yes, then SNMP will be used for extracting and downloading specific system data to the IND devices. If SNMP is not running, the inquiry ends there. Because scans will be done at specific intervals over a few days, the IND devices will provide a reasonably good listing of IT assets, with at least the IP addresses and manufacturers.

• Collation of Data

  The second part of this inventory will be the collection of all the data from the IND devices into a database using Peregrine Systems, Inc.’s AssetCenter. AssetCenter is an asset management application that will collect IT inventory data from the IND devices via a software tool called "ConnectIt!" ConnectIt! will send a daily inquiry to each IND device and update the central database—the "NIH AssetCenter." The data will later be formatted for delivery to a central DHHS AssetCenter. Although there is only one "NIH AssetCenter" for this project, several ICs have their own AssetCenters, which will query the IND devices independently.

The NIH is more than halfway through this project. Most of the network discovery IND devices have been delivered and installed, and the NIH AssetCenter for collating all NIH IT assets has been implemented. What remains to be done are the data gathering, collating, and formatting for delivery to DHHS.

Each institute and center had a representative in the NIH IND working group. CIT is coordinating the project for NIH, with the cooperation of NIH’s Information Technology Management Committee infrastructure subcommittee. DSTI, Inc. is the project manager for DHHS.