US Government Data Center Consolidation Behind Schedule, Cost Savings Uncertain

itwbennett writes "The goal of saving $3 billion by closing 1253 data centers is 'very realistic,' says David Powner, director of IT management issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office — except that agencies haven't been able to track cost savings for the initiative. Eighteen months from the 2015 deadline, 'we have no idea how much we've saved the taxpayers,' said Steve O'Keeffe, founder of MeriTalk, an online community for government IT issues. This isn't the first snag in the project. Almost a year ago, Slashdot reported that the project was woefully behind schedule." The government released a summary of what data they do have (PDF), and at least the DoD expects to save $575 million next fiscal year. Also see the full GAO report.

Comments

Whatever the government does, it does poorly...

[mi]

If, as even the Democrats admit, the government is "too vast" for the President to be responsible, we ought to be shrinking it, rather than continue its expansion to the new domains (like, uh, healthcare)...

Re:Whatever the government does, it does poorly...

[mi]

Failure to deal with the nation ending enormous failure of the "free market" solution to a social issue of health care

Sadly, the healthcare market in the US has not been free since the 1940-ies. During the War the government sought to limit workers' salaries, so, to attract talent, employers started offering "benefits" — like health insurance. This separated payers for health-care from the consumers of it — triggering the spiraling costs as the patients demanded the very best, while blaming the insurers for attempts to keep the costs sensible. The government compounded the problem making such benefits tax-deductible for employers, without counting them as taxable income for the employees.

Actually freeing the market would've helped — but, for some reason, the "reformers" were dead set against the competition (without which the market can not be considered free). Even buying a health plan from a different State is illegal, certainly not from a foreign insurer. One can even be forgiven for thinking, the sabotage of the market was deliberate — so as to allow to claim "market failure" and finally give the politicians the power they all tend to crave after 2 or 3 terms in office (some even sooner).

Instead of freeing, the market got under an even harder government control. Yes, control of that same benevolent omniscient government, that can not consolidate freaking datacenters... But don't worry, they will know, how to best allocate your monies (that you paid in taxes through your life) to your healthcare — that you will need primarily after retiring...

Oh, and the actual government agency ensuring compliance will be the same one, that already picks targets for audits and scrutiny based on the taxpayers' political persuasion. Are you honestly claiming, healthcare will improve in such circumstances? Will you really be surprised to learn, 30 years from now, that Conservatives are having their life-support turned-off, say, 30% sooner, than Progressives because the local "Independent Payment Advisory Board" (a.k.a. "death panel") decided against their case?

Re:Whatever the government does, it does poorly...

[moeinvt]

Medicare is "cheaper"? Yeah, because government fixes the prices they pay. Nothing is "free". Government stiffs the hospital by price fixing Medicaid/Medicare services, so hospitals just shift that cost onto everyone else, especially the uninsured.
Government forces hospitals to treat people at emergency rooms regardless of their willingness or ability to pay, but does not fund this mandate, so that also translates into higher bills for everyone else. Government bans re-importation of prescription drugs & medical devices, thus forcing Americans to subsidize R&D for the rest of the world and guarantee profits for big pharma.

With all of this cost shifting, retail prices are insanely expensive, so people are compelled to buy insurance. There's how your worthless middle man enters the picture, and now you MUST buy his product or the IRS will be after you.

Government has been heavily involved in the healthcare system for 50 years. What's the result? Costs have exploded, millions are unable to afford basic services, quality of service is poor for the price paid, etc. etc. Yet people think that even more government is the "solution"? That's how Einstein defined "insanity".

Eliminating a middle man would reduce costs. Competition and innovation would also drive down costs and increase quality. Government price controls and mandates do exactly the opposite.

Save now vs. over time

[Enry]

How much have they saved now? Probably not much, and probably spent more.

It costs money to find the location, arrange the contracts, hire new people/lay off or move staff, and move equipment between rooms. Even then, many organizations may say it's cheaper to buy new hardware than it is to move 5+ year old servers.

However, the efficiency once many of those data centers is closed will become apparent. Space/power/cooling/networking/staff isn't cheap. Consolidating will give you some amazing savings a few years in.

A Sign of the Times

[VortexCortex]

You know you're in trouble when they speak of how much money they're saving instead of how much they spent to acquire a feature or benefit. What about the data center that stores every digital interaction in America? I bet that costs a pretty penny to operate, let's shut it down, it's not doing us any good. Didn't stop the Boston Bombing... Hell, zoning laws could have prevented the recent explosion in West, TX (which was more harmful than the Boston bombs), but I don't see them trying to save anything at all anywhere -- Not even lives.

"Honey, look what I got, you wouldn't believe how much money I saved today!" -- No. She spent money, didn't "save" a dime. I'll evaluate cost to benefit ratio to determine if the purchases were wise.

Want to save money? Why not get rid of the DHS? They're not needed. We have FBI and cops already. We don't need a huge cumbersome annoying workforce of security guards who don't actually provide security. You Can't Provide Security for others -- They can only protect themselves, and should be aware of surroundings and cautious of dangers if need be; That saves money and lives.

How much of the money they're spending on 3rd party contractors is wasted by inflating the costs to turn a profit? I'm not stupid. They haven't saved a dime one.

Re:!able, unwilling

[NecroPuppy]

I'm (sorta) one of those admins.

It's not that local sites are refusing to go along with the data center consolidation, as we have to justify anything that stays here instead of moving to the data center 400 miles away, it's that in a lot of cases the data center people are saying, "You have to move", and then not understanding the reasons why we can't.

Whether or not this lack of understanding is deliberate or not, I'm not sure. We lowered our explanation to about a 6th grade comprehension level, and they finally seemed to get it, at least while they were on site.

Stuff like:

"These are the daily and weekly tasks we must perform with this system - you will have to sign an MOU/MOA (Memorandum of Understanding/Agreement) where you will accomplish these tasks how we tell you to." (Often, they didn't have the trained personnel to do it.)

"You will have to provide 24/7/365 uptime, with at least three 9s reliability (yes, I know that's low, but we couldn't justify higher), including the ability to do file level restoration." (They really balked at the file level restoration.)

"You have to have trained support personnel with OS experience." Their response was, "We can upgrade that to ." Our rebuttal, "No you can't, it has to stay in that exact configuration until changes are tested and approved by Echelon II."

We got to keep most of our stuff, at least so far.