PART I: Operational Efficiency

ACHIEVING OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY

Other Information:

As part of a broader IT transformation, the Federal Government needs to fundamentally shift its mindset from building custom systems to adopting light technologies and shared solutions. Too often, agencies build large standalone systems from scratch, segregated from other systems. These systems often duplicate others already within the Federal Government, wasting taxpayer dollars. The growth in data centers from 432 in 1998 to 2,094 in 2010 highlights this problem. Leading private sector companies have taken great strides to improve their operating efficiencies. Cloud technologies and Infrastructure-as-a-Service enable IT services to efficiently share demand across infrastructure assets, reducing the overall reserve capacity across the enterprise. Additionally, leveraging shared services of “commodity” applications such as e-mail across functional organizations allows organizations to redirect management attention and resources towards value-added activities. The massive scale of the Federal Government allows for great potential to leverage these efficiencies. The following section outlines actionable, achievable steps to improve the government’s operational efficiency.

Objective(s):

I.A: Light Technology and Shared Solutions

1: Data Center Consolidation

1.1: Program Managers

1.2: Task Force

1.3: Dashboard

2: Marketplace

3: Cloud Policy

3.1: Publication

3.2: Jump-Start

4: IaaS Contracts

5: Commodity Service Contracts

6: Shared Services Strategy

Content