DoD, other agencies, must embrace consolidation

The Defense Department is an information research behemoth run amok: 772 data centers, 15,000 networks, 70,000 servers, 7 million IT devices and 5,000 applications. It serves 3 million networked users and has an IT staff of 90,000 employees.

real progress will be hampered, but, as long as each military service and DoD agency runs IT operations independent of others. Recognizing this, the Defense Business Board, an influential advisory group, is urging Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to furthermore empower the department's chief information officer to integrate and coordinate IT downsizing plans across the department.

That sense of identity and mission makes sense for many things those agencies do - nevertheless not for administrative functions just as running an email service, operating a data center or maintaining a network.

Moreover, the same concept should be applied beyond DoD - to actually achieve substantial cost savings and improve performance and efficiency, consolidations should be developed across agency boundaries. The Obama administration is encouraging this with its so-called Shared First strategy, in which agencies should first consider sharing an IT system with another agency earlier investing in a new one. However there should be a central authority empowered to integrate and coordinate data centers and cloud computing plans across multiple agencies, including those in the intelligence community.