A GAO report to Congress has identified several areas where the government duplicates efforts, creating unnecessary costs and inefficiencies, but also reflects an improvement over last year.
The 2012 Duplicative Program Report, recently released by the Government Accountability Office, identified 51 areas “where programs may be able to achieve greater efficiencies or become more effective in providing government services.” Keep reading →
Improving situational awareness, creating trained cyber teams and building a more defensible architecture are top priorities for NSA and US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), according to Col. John Surdu, Military Deputy Chief, Combined Action Group (CAG).
Appearing on today’s Federal Executive Forum on Cybersecurity/Progress & Best Practices – “Defense & Homeland,” Col. Surdu outlined the top 5 priorities that both NSA and USCYBERCOM are pursuing to further advance the nation’s cyber defenses. Keep reading →
Every week, between 250 and 400 terabytes of data traverses the network backbone operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The data is stored and travels between 380,000 desktops, 40,000 laptops, 18,000 mobile devices, 21,000 servers and about 15,000 network devices VA employees use for work. On top of that, VA analysts have to maintain and manage massive data sets. Keep reading →
Email and SharePoint are no brainers for CIOs looking to move parts of the computing operations to the cloud. But what’s next? Not surprisingly as the Air Force drives to consolidate data centers and move apps to the cloud, IT executives are looking to virtualize as many applications as make sense.
But “sometimes it is difficult to determine what should actually be virtualized,” said Frank Konieczny, Air Force Chief Technology Officer, during a recent Federal Executive Forum on Emerging Technologies. Keep reading →
Joseph Klimavicz, CIO at NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration), spends his time trying to deliver as much technology as he can securely both to the agency and the public.
To deliver, he is focusing on how NOAA can take advantage of cloud solutions and cloud services. “We’ve got a whole host of things we are pushing to the cloud,” he said during a recent Federal Executive Forum on Emerging Technologies. Keep reading →
The State Department is eliminating 21,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually– and looking for more — as part of its worldwide power and systems management initiative to eliminate power waste across 100 percent of its workstation computers.
Projected to save millions annually when fully implemented, the initiative is designed to comply with OMB sustainability and energy management mandates, plus support the Department’s Greening Diplomacy Initiative. Currently State has 88,986 desktops at 468 worldwide sites – comprised of domestic facilities, embassies, consulates, and passport agencies. Keep reading →
This is the fourth article in a four-part series exploring what federal officials need to consider as agencies begin to look beyond current efforts to consolidate government data centers.
When your job is IT optimization, you spend your time literally searching for every opportunity to get the proverbial “bang for the buck” out of the scarce dollars you have. Keep reading →
This is the third article in a four-part series exploring what federal officials need to consider as agencies begin to look beyond current efforts to consolidate government data centers.
With 100 separate networks and operations in 130 countries, having a multi-secure data center environment with multi-tenancy would be a real game changer said the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Mike Mestrovich. Keep reading →
This is the second article in a four-part series exploring what federal officials need to consider as agencies begin to look beyond current efforts to consolidate government data centers.
When U.S. Army Col. Dave Acevedo, CIO/G-6 ADCCP Team, says the “stars — meaning Army brass — are literally aligned behind data center consolidation”, it shows how serious government is about reducing its data center footprint. Keep reading →
The Federal government is now on track to close 1,080 data centers by 2015 among 3,133 in operation as part of a broader administration effort to reduce duplicative spending and to do more with less.
Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel, however, has signaled a new emphasis on doing “more” — by investing in technology creatively–rather than focusing primarily “on the less” that is typically associated with cuts, including data center closures. Keep reading →