In a report released on Dec. 7, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that while Veterans Affairs (VA) has made some progress on key IT initiatives under Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) requirements, it has nonetheless fallen short of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) targets regarding consolidating and optimizing its data centers…
”FITARA, which became law in 2015…advocated specific requirements relating to seven areas, including data centers, CIO authority on incremental IT investments, as well as software acquisition policies and procedures.”
“GAO found VA’s data center optimization efforts have lagged behind other agencies in making progress toward closing data centers and realizing associated cost savings. VA reported a total inventory of 415 data centers, 39 of which had been closed as of August 2017. The department expects to shutter another 10 data centers by the end of fiscal 2018…”
“VA, however, isn’t alone in falling short of OMB data-center targets. GAO said that according to strategic plans submitted by the 24 agencies affected by the Data Center Optimization Initiative, most agencies did not expect to meet OMB’s optimizations goals by fiscal 2018…”
Source: GAO: VA Makes Progress on Some FITARA-Related Goals but Falls Short on Data Center Targets – By Richard W. Walker, December 18, 2017. MeriTalk. Read the full article here.
