Vivek Kundra: setting the pace for tomorrow's government computing

“The path we are on does not make sense.” That's the grim prognosis that's currently shaping US federal government computing. The man in charge of finding the correct path to take is Vivek Kundra, appointed by President Barrack Obama as Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the White House.   

 

Kundra has become best known for his advocacy of Cloud Computing as a new paradigm for delivering government computing – something he pursued actively during his time as Chief Technology Officer for the District of Columbia. But while that's the 'vision thing', the first task on the agenda is consolidation of infrastructure.  Put simply there are just too many data centres in the US system and Kundra wants to see many of them closed. To that end, a team is currently working on a complete inventory of all current data centre infrastructure, including from servers through networks to routers. 

 

The number of Federal agency data centres has more than doubled in ten years, from an estimated 432 in 1998 to over 1,100 in 2009. That means that the government is spending $19 billion on infrastructure, but  agencies are using only 15-to-20% of the capacity of many data centres.

 

CIOs from the Treasury and Homeland Security departments (DHS) will lead the push to consolidate nearly 1,200 data centres. The Treasury's Michael Duffy and DHS' Richard Spires will spend eight months creating a plan to bring about the necessary savings. "We want to set a clear path and that is one of the reasons I've charged Richard Spires of the Homeland Security Department and Mike Duffy at the Department of Treasury to lead the data centre consolidation within the CIO Council," outlines Kundra. 

 

"What's going to happen in the next eight months, we are going forward with a very detailed inventory of every single data centre in the US government. Not an just at an abstract level, but actually getting into the number of racks, servers, routers, switches and utilisation of those servers. We are going through a very exhaustive process of making sure we've got a clear image of current state."

 

"It is fairly far along in the planning phase and now it's about collecting the data," noted Kundra in a memo to all agencies. "It will take significant amount of time, as much as six months. We want to get down to the server level. We want to figure out how big is this problem and how our strategy should evolve based on optimizing in terms of in some data centers looking virtualization or asking why we have three data centers instead of one.” 

 

 

In reality, compared to the pace of UK ICT public sector initiatives, the pace of all this is startling. By the end of April, agencies need to complete an initial inventory of the hardware. By the end of June, all agencies must have an initial consolidation plan in place that identifies "potential areas for consolidation, areas where optimization through server virtualization or Cloud Computing alternatives may be used and a high-level roadmap for transitioning to the consolidated end-state architecture." 

 

By the end of August they must complete their consolidation plans and include them in their fiscal 2012 budget request which will be signed off – or rejected – by the Office of Mangement and Budget (OMB) by the end of the year."These plans must be approved by OMB by Dec. 31," the memo states. "The final plans will include a technical roadmap and approach for achieving the targets for infrastructure utilization, energy efficiency and cost efficiency."

 

This consolidation is seen as an essential preliminary move towards the wider move to Cloud Computing.  “If you are running an application on 10 servers, and move it to Cloud Computing, what are the rewards of that?” demands Kundra.  "We've seen that this is the best practice from the private sector, and the government needs to take it head on.”

 

As well as the Cloud, mobile technologies will also play a large part in the Kundra vision of the future. "If you look at the phenomenal success we've seen around mobile computing and being able to go online and scan products through the iPhone or go online and figure out where closest metro station is to you or make a reservation,” he explains. 

 

“Part of what we want to do in closing the technology gap is make sure that in the same way we've seen massive productivity gains in our personal lives and massive productivity gains in the private sector that we can translate that into the public sector. Why don't have mobile lab that allows you to access a whole host of services around the federal government.

 

"We see mobile computing as central to being able to serve the American people and making sure government services are presented in a context that the American people are most comfortable with," he adds. "We also want to make sure solutions are engineered with citizens in mind and not afterwards so a new approach to how we deploy information technology."

 

 

So much for tomorrow, but what about today? How can Kundra and his team bring about a necessary change in the whole way ICT projects are approached across government in an age of necessary austerity. "We had over $30 billion worth of IT projects that were either behind schedule or over budget," says Kundra. "[We're] going after, aggressively, IT projects that don't perform, and either halting them, turning them around or terminating them. ... We're being very aggressive in terms of how we're managing information technology."

 

"We need to figure out how the government can serve the American people in the contexts they're most comfortable in," argues Kundra, adding that he plans to  kick in a policy in 2011 whereby he will have three to four meetings a week – called TechStat sessions - with Federal CIOs to evaluate the status of troubled tech projects. "TechStat allows us to convene the agency's CIO and business leaders, and I lead those sessions," he explains. "We look at IT projects that are behind schedule and over budget and focus on problem solving. We also have the RMO from OMB, branch chiefs and the chief financial officer from the agency. We problem solve to figure out what we need to do-terminate, turn them around or halt them.

 

"The TechStat sessions are a big part of what we're going to do - review all these investments and take decisive action so we can terminate projects that are not benefiting the American people,"  he adds. "We want to be able to create an environment where CIOs across the federal government feel comfortable sharing best practices. Part of the 2011 budget looks to increase the velocity and frequency of these sessions.”

 

Already the first impact of the TechStat scheme has been seen in relation to the Environmental Protection Agency's financial management modernisation program which is $30 million over budget and a year behind schedule. As a result of a January TechStat meeting, EPA is taking several steps to address the issues blighting the project.  "We learned a lot from the EPA sessions where we can connect them with other agencies with similar problems," reckons Kundra. "I also invited every CIO to come to these sessions, and CIOs are sharing their insights. I hope to see cross fertilization of ideas and new approaches. We want immediate action, not a year or two from now."

 

Kundra's office also plans to relaunch an IT dashboard in the next few months, providing more detail and transparency on the status of federal IT projects.  "You'll see from inception to completion the lifecycle of IT projects," he said. "We're going to make the operations of the government far more transparent than you've ever seen before.”

 

As an age of post election austerity kicks in for the UK, regardless of who wins the election, Kundra's UK counterparts would do well to cast an eye over the precedent being set across the pond and apply a variant of it to the public sector in this country.