Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra told a Senate subcommittee yesterday that of the 800 federal data centers the government wants to close by 2015, 100 of them could be shuttered by the end of this year, according to a Bloomberg report.
“We want to move forward very, very aggressively to make sure that assets that are not being utilized are not wasting taxpayer money on them,” Kundra said, according to FierceGovernmentIT.
Kundra’s testimony comes at a time when deadlines set in the 25-point IT reform act are set to come due. So far, FierceGovernmentIT reports, federal agencies have made significant progress on 12 of the plan’s key provisions.
The CIO also echoed the Office of Management and Budget’s accomplishments: $3 billion in IT costs saved over the past two years by “re-focusing runaway IT programs, consolidating infrastructure and investing in light technologies,†FierceGovernmentIT explains.
On another of the reform’s provisions and a hot topic across the federal IT sphere — cloud computing — Kundra said just last week the migration to cloud computing is no longer a question of “if†but “when.â€
He told the subcommittee that all agencies have identified at least three “must-move†systems  that will migrate to the cloud. The next step is looking at security considerations for web-based services and architecture, he added.
