Federal government unveils IT reform plan

Monday, December 13, 2010

 

Following the recent announcement by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget that it will overhaul the government's IT management strategies, federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra has released a plan detailing the steps the government will take to ensure the restructuring is complete.

The goal, according to the plan, is to improve operational efficiency and make better use of the billions of dollars spent on IT every year.

The plan establishes 25 points of action the government will take to accomplish these goals. Among the more noteworthy steps is the initiative to remove at least 800 of the government's 1,200 data centers by 2015.

This continues the initiative launched earlier this year to reduce the cost of data centers and increase the overall security of the government.

Additionally, the government will implement a "cloud-first" policy, by which it hopes to reduce costs and increase flexibility by adopting public cloud computing whenever possible.

Since his hiring by President Obama, Kundra has been a huge proponent of adopting cloud computing for government. According to InformationWeek, the federal government represents one of the biggest IT spenders in the world with a budget of $79.4 billion in fiscal year 2011.