“Reducing Duplication and Improving Outcomes in Federal Information Technology” was discussed at the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on June 11, 2013. Frank Baitman Deputy Assistant Secretary for Information Technology and CIO for HHS testified.
As Baitman explained, HHS is making the effort to eliminate duplication in the HHS IT large and varied portfolio. HHS is both a supplier and consumer of shared IT services and operates a number of shared IT services supporting grants management such as grants.gov.
NIH’s IT Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC) is an example of shared services and administers a number of government-wide acquisition contracts that can be used by any Federal agency to acquire IT products, services, and solutions. Another example is the Program Support Center a shared service center within HHS providing shared IT systems to customers within HHS and across the Federal government.
HHS is also increasing the efficiency of the HHS IT portfolio is by consolidating data centers. HHS has closed or consolidated almost 30 data centers since the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative began.
HHS realizes that moving into cloud computing can produce cost savings, better performance, and more efficient maintenance. However cloud computing comes with challenges that necessitates dealing with security issues when the data is moved to the cloud.
A few weeks ago, HHS became the first agency to grant an “Agency Authorization to Operate” (ATO) for a cloud service provider through the FedRAMP process. This makes it possible for the provider’s services to be available to the entire Federal government and HHS plans to use this process for other vendors in the coming months.
HHS has moved a number of systems and applications, including the grants-management system called GrantSolutions.gov and FDA’s MedWatch+ system to the cloud. Moving MedWatch+ to the cloud has reduced hosting costs by 87% including just over $1 million in hardware costs.
In March 2012, OMB initiated PortfolioStat to look across agencies to identify common areas of spending with the goal of reducing duplication and driving down costs. As part of this initiative, agencies are required to conduct an annual review of their IT investments and make decisions on eliminating duplication.
HHS has been working through PortfolioStat with OMB and is now able to see a department-level view of the problem. Secondly, PortfolioStat helps HHS discuss and prioritize department-wide IT consolidation activities.
For more information on the hearing, go to www.thomas.gov.