Agencies Making Progress on Efforts, but Inventories and Plans Need to Be Completed
By Government Accountability Office - Published, July 19, 2012
In 2010, as a focal point for information technology management across the government, the Office of Managment and Budget's (OMB) Federal Chief Information Officer launched the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative - an effort to consolidate the growing number of federal data centers. In July 2011, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) evaluated 24 agencies' progress on this effort and reported that most agencies had not yet completed data center inventories or consolidation plans and recommended that they do so.
In this subsequent review, GAO was asked to (1) evaluate the extent to which the 24 agencies updated and verified their data center inventories and plans, (2) evaluate the extent to which selected agencies have adequately completed key elements of their consolidation plans, and (3) identify agencies' notable consolidation successes and challenges. To address these objectives, GAO assessed the completeness of agency inventories and plans, analyzed the schedule and cost estimates of five agencies previously reported to have completed one or both estimates, and interviewed officials from all 24 agencies about their consolidation successes and challenges.
As of the most recent agency data submitted in September 2011, 24 agencies identified almost 2,900 total centers, established plans to close 1,186 of them by 2015, and estimated they would realize over $2.4 billion in cost savings in doing so. However, while OMB required agencies to complete missing elements in their data center inventories and plans by the end of September 2011, only three agencies submitted complete inventories and only one agency submitted a complete plan.
View the full report here: GAO-12-742