The Government Accountability Office has called on the Office of Management and Budget and federal agencies to complete their plans for data center consolidation and ensure the consistency of reported savings across reporting channels in order to meet optimization goals.GAO made the recommendation after it found that only seven out of 23 agencies that filed their strategic plans had implemented all the requirements for data center reduction efforts, the agency said in a report published Tuesday.
Agencies had shut down 4,388 data centers and initiated plans to close additional 5,597 data facilities through fiscal 2019 in compliance with the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, GAO reported in May.
The congressional watchdog urged agencies to monitor and maintain inventories of software licenses for use in data analysis to facilitate decision-making processes and identify cost reduction opportunities.
The report also showed that as of May, OMB and agencies have fully executed approximately 47 percent of GAO’s 800 recommendations to address issues related to IT acquisitions and related operations between fiscal 2010 and 2015.
Agencies should increase the frequency of their ratings when it comes to the risk levels of their investments as recorded on OMB’s IT dashboard as well as launch efforts to build up incremental data reporting on the dashboard, GAO added.
