Computerworld - WASHINGTON - The White House Thursday announced plans to restructure IT by consolidating federal government data centers and applications, and adopting a so-called "cloud first" policy.
The federal plan, released by federal CIO Vivek Kundra, calls for eliminating at least 800 of the government's 2,100 data centers by 2015, as well as shifting some work to commercial, private and government-run cloud computing systems.
The goal, he said, is to help agencies share services and avoid duplication.
Since his appointment near the start of Obama's administration, Kundra has been a strong advocate of cloud computing, of transparency in IT spending and the use of dashboards.
Kundra has also solicited ideas and opinions on improving IT operations from data center executives in the private sector.
Yesterday's plan, which outlines 25 specific points, tied in a lot of those themes along with some new initiatives.
But Kundra's plan is missing key elements likely important to the people affected by it, namely federal IT workers and the large contractor community that work with them, say analysts.
For instance, they said, the plan is silent on the fate of employees whose data center is targeted for consolidation or migration to commercial cloud services.
Implementing this plan will involve some personnel reorganization in the form of integrated program teams, which may open up new training opportunities, particularly for program managers to run this new environment.
However, getting employee buy-in may have been made a little more challenging by President Barack Obama's recently announced plan to forego federal pay raises for the next two years.
The federal government's $80 billion IT budget is a major source of private sector employment in the area. Thus, consolidation and increasing sharing of IT services by government agencies may also impact contractors who sell and services government systems.
TechAmerica, an industry group, reported this week that it counted 293,000 tech workers in the Washington area, the second largest concentration in the country after New York.
This IT pilot fish at a government agency gets a call from the administrative officer, who's on the verge of hysterics: Her computer is dead, she's having a total meltdown, and it's all his fault.
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