The federal government’s increasing demand for IT has led to an increase in the number of federal data centers and a corresponding increase in operational costs. According to OMB, the federal government reported 432 data centers in 1998, 2,094 in July 2010, and 9,995 in August 2016. Operating such a large number of centers has been and continues to be a significant cost to the federal government, including costs for hardware, software, real estate, and cooling. For example, in 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that the electricity costs to operate federal servers and data centers across the government were about $450 million annually. According to the Department of Energy (Energy), a typical data center has 100 to 200 times the energy use intensity of a commercial building. In 2009, OMB reported that server utilization rates as low as 5 percent across the federal government’s estimated 150,000 servers were a factor driving the need to establish a coordinated, government-wide effort to improve the efficiency, performance, and environmental footprint of federal data center activities. Concerned about the size of the federal data center inventory and the potential to improve the efficiency, performance, and the environmental footprint of federal data center activities, OMB, under the direction of the Federal CIO, established FDCCI in February 2010. This initiative’s four high-level goals were to promote the use of “green IT” by reducing the overall energy and real estate footprint of government data centers; reduce the cost of data center hardware, software, and operations; increase the overall IT security posture of the government; and shift IT investments to more efficient computing platforms and technologies. As part of the initiative, OMB required the 24 agencies to identify a data center consolidation program manager to lead the agency’s consolidation efforts. In addition, agencies were required to submit an asset inventory baseline and other documents that would result in a plan for consolidating their data centers. The asset inventory baseline was to contain detailed information on each data center and identify the consolidation approach to be taken for each one. It would serve as the foundation for developing the final data center consolidation plan. The data center consolidation plan would serve as a technical road map and approach for achieving the targets for infrastructure utilization, energy efficiency, and cost efficiency. In October 2010, OMB reported that all of the agencies had submitted an inventory and plan. OMB also clarified the definition of a data center and noted that, for the purposes of FDCCI, a data center is defined as any room used for the purpose of processing or storing data that is larger than 500 square feet and meets stringent availability requirements. Under this definition, OMB reported that agencies had identified 2,094 data centers as of July 2010. “…a data center is…a closet, room, floor, or building for the storage, management, and dissemination of data and information and computer systems and associated components, such as database, application, and storage systems and data stores [excluding facilities exclusively devoted to communications and network equipment (e.g., telephone exchanges and telecommunications rooms)]. A data center generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls…and special security devices housed in leased, owned, collocated, or stand-alone facilities.” Under the new definition, OMB estimated that there were a total of 3,133 federal data centers in December 2011, and its goal was to consolidate approximately 40 percent, or 1,253 data centers, for a savings of approximately $3 billion by the end of 2015. See figure 1 for an example of an image of data center server racks at the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) National Support Center. In March 2012, OMB launched the PortfolioStat initiative, which requires agencies to conduct an annual agency-wide IT portfolio review to, among other things, reduce commodity IT spending and demonstrate how its IT investments align with the agency’s mission and business functions. PortfolioStat is designed to assist agencies in assessing the current maturity of their IT portfolio management process, make decisions on eliminating duplication, and move to shared solutions in order to maximize the return on IT investments across the portfolio. Subsequently, in March 2013, OMB issued a memorandum that documented the integration of FDCCI with PortfolioStat and stated that agencies should focus on an enterprise-wide approach to address commodity IT (including data centers) in a comprehensive manner. The memorandum also discussed consolidating previously collected IT-related plans, reports, and data submissions. For example, agencies were no longer required to submit the data center consolidation plans previously required in 2012. However, OMB required agencies to update their data center inventories and report on consolidation progress at the end of every quarter. OMB’s 2013 memorandum also increased the focus on optimizing the performance of federal data centers. Specifically, OMB stated that, to more effectively measure the efficiency of an agency’s data center assets, agencies would also be measured by the extent to which their primary data centers were optimized for total cost of ownership by incorporating metrics for data center energy, facility, labor, and storage, among other things. Subsequently, in May 2014, OMB issued memorandum M-14-08, which established a set of data center optimization metrics to measure agency progress. In addition, OMB established target values that agencies were expected to achieve by the end of fiscal year 2015. Recognizing the importance of reforming the government-wide management of IT, Congress enacted FITARA in December 2014. Among other things, the law includes a number of requirements related to federal data center consolidation and optimization: Agencies shall submit to OMB a comprehensive inventory of the data centers owned, operated, or maintained by or on behalf of the agency. Agencies shall submit a multi-year strategy to achieve the consolidation and optimization of the agency’s data centers no later than the end of fiscal year 2016. This strategy should include, for example, performance metrics that are consistent with the government-wide data center consolidation and optimization metrics. On a quarterly basis, agencies shall report to OMB’s Administrator of the Office of Electronic Government on progress towards meeting government-wide data center consolidation and optimization metrics. OMB’s Administrator of the Office of Electronic Government shall establish metrics applicable to the consolidation and optimization of data centers (including server efficiency), ensure that agencies’ progress toward meeting government-wide data center consolidation and optimization metrics is made publicly available, review agencies’ inventories and strategies to determine whether they are comprehensive and complete, and monitor the implementation of each agency’s strategy. Not later than December 19, 2015, OMB’s Administrator of the Office of Electronic Government shall develop and make publicly available, a goal, broken down by year, for the amount of planned cost savings and optimization improvements achieved through FDCCI and, for each year thereafter through October 1, 2018, compare reported cost savings and optimization improvements against those goals. The law’s data center consolidation and optimization provisions expire on October 1, 2018. In June 2015, OMB memorandum M-15-14 provided guidance for implementing FITARA and related IT management practices. OMB’s guidance includes several actions that agencies are to take to establish a basic set of roles and responsibilities (referred to as the “common baseline”) for CIOs and other senior agency officials that are needed to implement the authorities described in the law. For example, agencies are to conduct a self-assessment to identify where they conform to the common baseline and where they deviate. OMB guidance also requires agencies to annually update their self-assessments and report their progress in reaching FITARA implementation milestones. In August 2016, OMB issued a memorandum that established DCOI and included guidance on how to implement the data center consolidation and optimization provisions of FITARA. Among other things, the guidance requires agencies to consolidate inefficient infrastructure, optimize existing facilities, improve their security posture, and achieve cost savings. For example, agencies are required to maintain a complete inventory of all data center facilities owned, operated, or maintained by or on behalf of the agencies and measure progress toward defined optimization performance metrics on a quarterly basis as part of their data center inventory submissions. OMB’s August 2016 memorandum also revised the definition of a physical data center to include any room with at least one server that provides services (such as testing and development). Further, OMB’s guidance directed agencies to categorize their data centers as either a tiered data center or a non-tiered data center. OMB guidance defines a tiered data center as one that uses each of the following: a separate physical space for IT infrastructure, an uninterruptible power supply, a dedicated cooling system or zone, and a backup power generator for a prolonged power outage. According to OMB, all other data centers shall be considered non-tiered. Regarding data center optimization planning, the memorandum directs agencies to develop DCOI strategic plans that define their data center strategies for fiscal years 2016 through 2018. Among other things, this strategy is to include a timeline for agency consolidation and optimization activities with an emphasis on cost savings and optimization performance benchmarks the agency can achieve between fiscal years 2016 and 2018. For example, agencies are required to establish planned data center optimization milestones and report on progress toward achieving those milestones in their strategic plans. OMB required agencies to publicly post the plans to their agency-owned digital strategy websites by September 30, 2016, and to post subsequent strategic plan updates by April 14, 2017, and April 13, 2018. OMB also directed agencies to update their publicly available FITARA implementation milestone information to identify, at a minimum, five milestones per fiscal year to be achieved through DCOI. According to OMB, the DCOI milestones are expected to be updated quarterly as progress is achieved and are to be reviewed in quarterly meetings with OMB staff. Further, the memorandum states that OMB will report government-wide and agency-specific progress on the IT Dashboard—a public website that provides detailed information on major IT investments.