• About 
• What We're Working On 
  • IT Reform
  • Cloud Computing
  • Data Center Consolidation
  • Transparent Government
  • Cybersecurity
  • IT Workforce
• News 
• Resources 
  • KnowledgeBase
  • Best Practices
  • TechStat
  • FedRamp
  • IT Dashboard
    
  • Tech Fellows Program
    
• CIO Council
  • About The Council
  • People & Organization
  • Committees
  • Knowledge Base

The Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) was established by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in early 2010. This is a government-wide initiative designed to reduce the cost and energy footprint of federal data centers while increasing efficiency, strengthening the overall government security posture, and promoting Green IT by reducing the total number of Federal data centers. At DOT, we view FDCCI as an opportunity to leverage new technologies and surplus data center capacity to achieve further cost savings and cost avoidance. We will accomplish this task with a focus in five key areas: virtualization, consolidation, outsourcing & decommissioning, enterprise standards, and a focus on our business customers.

Maximizing the use of DOT’s major data centers and consolidating small operations into “magnet” data centers is our primary focus. While we have an immediate focus on “quick wins” and small-scale consolidation, our ultimate goal is to create magnet data centers of application hosting excellence that will garner trust from our customers from pre-existing DOT sites. To accomplish this goal, these magnet data centers will leverage best practices in service management, such as ITIL. This focus on best practices will ensure that all DOT Magnet Data Centers focus on customer service and quality from the start. We will establish, measure, and manage hosting/housing service levels so that customers will have confidence that the service they have grown accustomed to with the existing IT support teams will continue in the consolidated DOT environment.

Within the data center environment, virtualization is DOT’s primary strategy for reducing its overall data center footprint. The ability to host virtual computers and operating environments on a central machine will enable us to continue to provide agile services while reducing the physical space needed to house our equipment. DOT is already virtualizing extensively within the existing data center environment and will continue to do so in the future.

As we consolidate services into a more efficient layout, we will identify facilities that contain multiple data centers and consolidate these centers to the extent possible. This will enable us to decommission extraneous hardware and applications. Where feasible and as consolidation plans require, DOT will look to cloud solutions to meet ongoing capacity and security needs. This may entail outsourcing some services if we require additional capacity and cost assessments indicate that outsourcing is an efficient option.

Since efficient operations are the primary focus of FDCCI, DOT will also develop standard approaches and tools for capturing, measuring, and reporting relevant data. Driving transparency and accurate reporting at an Enterprise level will ensure better management of DOT’s total investment in data center infrastructure.

We realize that any sort of infrastructure consolidation effort impacts people—their power, their influence, and sometimes their jobs. Throughout the implementation of FDCCI, we will maintain a focus on our business customers. As the DOT CIO, I will make every effort to ensure affected personnel are familiar with each step of the process so that they can operate in an atmosphere of certainty and predictability. It is also very important to communicate the purpose and rationale of FDCCI early on, so that everyone understands the goals of the process and can assist us in its implementation.

DOT views FDCCI as a long-term project that will span many years for implementation across the department. Our timeline includes OMB planning and implementation milestones through the end of 2013, and extends into 2015. However, we have already begun to consolidate several of our data centers. As of Oct. 1, we have consolidated one Tier II data center and 10 Tier V (server room/closet) data centers, and we plan to close an additional Tier I data center and 4 Tier V data centers by the end of the calendar year.[1]

Data center consolidation takes time and some patience. It is a long process to identify and coordinate consolidation options, present them to management and then to users, and then work through the technical side of migrations.  DOT has found that fast-tracking these consolidations can lead to confusion from affected management and users, and does not leave enough time for technical issues to be resolved.  Strategic communication is a very important activity to help gain stakeholders’ support and to ensure users are aware of the technical activities that will affect them. For this reason, DOT has released a detailed plan documenting our FDCCI strategy and program milestones, available at www.dot.gov/cio.

If you have any thoughts or ideas on how we can better accomplish our goals for FDCCI, please share them at Ideascale.