The Justice Department is working on its implementation plan for the provisions of the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), even though the Office of Management and Budget(OMB) has not yet provided guidance on following the new law.
In an online chat hosted by Federal News Radio, Joe Klimavicz, the CIO at DOJ, said that he has already had numerous conversations with executive officers at Justice and the CIOs of the department’s component agencies about his office’s FITARA strategy and implementation.
“[We] have not made any changes yet,” Klimavicz said. “There are many places where we are already implementing parts of FITARA.”
DOJ also is creating a service broker function within Klimavicz’s office. The department has completed phase 1 consolidation of its email, and he said they are looking for more opportunities to consolidate functions. The department is starting with basic infrastructure and commodities, and will expand to enterprise-wide solutions over time, he said.
“My shared services strategy is to be inclusive in our search for better services,” he said. “I encourage DOJ [c]omponents to be leaders in shared services. My office does not need to deliver every shared service. If a … component has a service which can be extended across the Department, I encourage them to do so. Service providers are not just DOJ entities, but can include other federal agencies and industry.”
Another area in flux is data center consolidation, in keeping with then-Federal CIO Vivek Kundra’s directive in February 2010. Klimavicz said that DOJ had 110 data centers that year; they have been trimmed to 45 centers so far. “By 2019, we plan to consolidate and optimize commodity infrastructure to three core enterprise data centers,” he said.
Other initiatives under way at DOJ include looking to move some systems to the cloud and continuing to develop strategies for the use of mobile devices.
“We are evaluating options for moving certain systems into the cloud where it helps DOJ gain efficiencies,” Klimavicz said. Ensuring the end-to-end security of sensitive data is a key requirement for cloud computing; he said the department is working with cloud service providers aligned with the FedRAMP process to make sure any such migrations evaluate and mitigate the risks involved.
As for mobile, Klimavicz said DOJ provides devices – such as tablets and smart phones – to employees; he did not mention whether DOJ is looking at BYOD.
“From a headquarters perspective, our goal is to strike a balance between securing devices [and] empowering the individual to get the most use out of the device’s capabilities,” he said.
