Over the last 15 years, the federal government’s increasing demand for IT has led to a dramatic rise in the number of federal data centers and a corresponding increase in operational costs. According to OMB, the federal government had 432 data centers in 1998 and more than 1,100 in 2009. Operating such a large number of centers is a significant cost to the federal government, including costs for hardware, software, real estate, and cooling. For example, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, the electricity cost to operate federal servers and data centers across the government is about $450 million annually. According to the Department of Energy, data center spaces can consume 100 to 200 times more electricity than a standard office space. According to OMB, reported server utilization rates as low as 5 percent and limited reuse of data centers within or across agencies lend further credence to the need to restructure federal data center operations to improve efficiency and reduce costs. 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 are 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 FDCCI, OMB required the 24 agencies to identify a senior, dedicated data center consolidation program manager to lead their 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. While OMB is primarily responsible for FDCCI, the agency designated two agency CIOs to be executive sponsors to lead the effort within the Federal CIO Council, the principal interagency forum to improve IT- related practices across the federal government. In addition, OMB identified two additional organizations to assist in managing and overseeing FDCCI: The GSA FDCCI Program Management Office is to support OMB in the planning, execution, management, and communications for FDCCI. The Data Center Consolidation Task Force is comprised of the data center consolidation program managers from each agency. According to its charter, the Task Force is critical to supporting collaboration across the FDCCI agencies, including identifying and disseminating key pieces of information, solutions, and processes that will help agencies in their consolidation efforts. In an effort to accelerate federal data center consolidation, OMB has directed agencies to use cloud computing as an approach to migrating or replacing systems with Internet-based services and resources. In December 2010, in its 25 Point IT Reform Plan, OMB identified cloud computing as having the potential to play a major part in achieving operational efficiencies in the federal government’s IT environment. According to OMB, cloud computing brings a wide range of benefits, including that it is (1) economical—a low initial investment is required to begin and additional investment is needed only as system use increases, (2) flexible—computing capacity can be quickly and easily added or subtracted, and (3) fast—long procurements are eliminated, while providing a greater selection of available services. To help achieve these benefits, OMB issued a “Cloud First” policy that required federal agencies to increase their use of cloud computing whenever a secure, reliable, and cost-effective cloud solution exists. GAO, Information Technology Reform: Progress Made but Future Cloud Computing Efforts Should be Better Planned, GAO-12-756 (Washington, D.C.: July 11, 2012) and Information Security: Federal Guidance Needed to Address Control Issues with Implementing Cloud Computing, GAO-10-513 (Washington, D.C.: May 27, 2010). unique to government agencies, such as continuous monitoring and maintaining an inventory of systems. Agencies also noted that, because of the on-demand, scalable nature of cloud services, it can be difficult to define specific quantities and costs and, further, that these uncertainties make contracting and budgeting difficult due to the fluctuating costs associated with scalable and incremental cloud service procurements. Finally, agencies cited other challenges associated with obtaining guidance, and acquiring knowledge and expertise, among other things. More recently, in March 2013, OMB issued a memorandum documenting the integration of FDCCI with the PortfolioStat initiative. Launched by OMB in March 2012, PortfolioStat requires agencies to conduct an annual agency-wide IT portfolio review to, among other things, reduce commodity IT spending, demonstrate how its IT investments align with the agency’s mission and business functions, and make decisions on eliminating duplication. OMB’s March 2013 memorandum discusses OMB’s efforts to further the PortfolioStat initiative by incorporating several changes, such as consolidating previously collected IT-related plans, reports, and data submissions. The memorandum also establishes new agency reporting requirements and related time frames. Specifically, agencies are no longer required to submit the data center consolidation plans previously required under FDCCI. Rather, agencies are to submit information to OMB via three primary means—an information resources management strategic plan, an enterprise road map, and an integrated data collection channel. In July 2012, we issued a report on the status of FDCCI and found that, while agencies’ 2011 inventories and plans had improved as compared to their 2010 submissions, significant weaknesses still remained. Specifically, while all 24 agencies reported on their inventories to some extent, only 3 had submitted a complete inventory. The remaining 21 agency submissions had weaknesses in several areas. For example, while most agencies provided complete information on their virtualization efforts, network storage, and physical servers, 18 agencies did not provide complete data center information, such as data center type, gross floor area, and target date for closure. In particular, several agencies fully reported on gross floor area and closure information, but partially reported data center costs. In addition, 17 agencies did not provide full information on their IT facilities and energy usage. For example, the Department of Labor partially reported on total data center IT power capacity and average data center electricity usage and did not report any information on total data center power capacity. We also noted that 3 agencies had submitted their inventory using an outdated format, in part, because OMB had not publicly posted its revised guidance. Figure 1 provides an assessment of the completeness of agencies’ 2011 inventories, by key element. Officials from several agencies reported that some of the required information was unavailable at certain data center facilities. We reported that, because the continued progress of FDCCI is largely dependent on accomplishing goals built on the information provided by agency inventories, it will be important for agencies to continue to work on completing their inventories, thus providing a sound basis for their savings and utilization forecasts. In addition, while all 24 agencies submitted consolidation plans to OMB, For the remaining 23 agencies, only 1 had submitted a complete plan.selected elements were missing from each plan. For example, among the 24 agencies, all provided complete information on their qualitative impacts, and nearly all included a summary of the consolidation approach, a well-defined scope for data center consolidation, and a high- level timeline for consolidation efforts. However, most notably, 21 agencies did not fully report their expected cost savings; of those, 13 agencies provided partial cost savings information and 8 provided none. Among the reasons that this information was not included, a Department of Defense official told us that it was challenging to gather savings information from all the department’s components, while a National Science Foundation official told us the information was not included because the agency had not yet realized any cost savings and so had nothing to report. Other significant weaknesses were that many agencies’ consolidation plans did not include a full cost-benefit analysis that included aggregate year-by-year investment and cost savings calculations through fiscal year 2015, a complete master program and quantitative goals, such as complete savings and schedule,utilization forecasts. Figure 2 provides an assessment of the completeness of agencies’ 2011 consolidation plans, by key element. Officials from several agencies reported that the plan information was still being developed. We concluded that, in the continued absence of completed consolidation plans, agencies are at risk of implementing their respective initiatives without a clear understanding of their current state and proposed end state and not being able to realize anticipated savings, improved infrastructure utilization, or energy efficiency. We also found that while agencies were experiencing data center consolidation successes, they were also encountering challenges. While almost 20 areas of success were reported, the 2 most often cited focused on virtualization and cloud services as consolidation solutions, and working with other agencies and components to find consolidation opportunities. Further, while multiple challenges were reported, the two most common challenges were both specifically related to FDCCI data reporting required by OMB: obtaining power usage information and providing a quality data center asset inventory. We further reported that, to assist agencies with their data center consolidation efforts, OMB had sponsored the development of a FDCCI total cost of ownership model that was intended to help agencies refine their estimated costs for consolidation; however, agencies were not required to use the cost model as part of their cost estimating efforts. We stated that, until OMB requires agencies to use the model, agencies will likely continue to use a variety of methodologies and assumptions in establishing consolidation estimates, and it will remain difficult to summarize projections across agencies.