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GCN Home > 06/26/06 issue

DHS Special Report | Component approach aiding IT infrastructure consolidation

Directorates taking the lead, but department CIO has control

By Mary Mosquera, GCN Staff

Until last October, the Homeland Security Department did not even have a global access directory—a basic requirement for a large organization. Employees couldn’t find each other if they were in different DHS directorates.

Now, secretary Michael Chertoff can send an all-department e-mail with a few select addresses instead of sending it to each component agency and ordering it to cascade through those organizations.

Once the decision was made to create this simple but necessary directory, it took just one month for the Coast Guard to push it to all the DHS components.

Although elementary, the global access directory is an indication that DHS is moving ahead on projects that supply backbone support for the homeland security mission but which have languished in the planning stages.

While the global access directory still did not reduce the number of e-mail systems—though that is one of DHS’ priorities—it is part of the department’s IT consolidation that, as recently as a year ago, was a concept without focus.

Better performance

A disciplined process and an organized plan for execution promise to transform DHS’ patched-together networks and data centers into a singular and standardized IT infrastructure, said Anthony Cira, director of Information Operations for the Office of the CIO.

The fulfillment of that promise will be better performance across the department, Cira said.

“This is like a [corporate] merger and acquisition. You’ve got 22 companies, and it’s how fast can you get them together,” he said.

New leadership last year, with the selection of DHS secretary Michael Chertoff and CIO Scott Charbo, and a disciplined implementation plan have shifted the infrastructure transformation forward, Cira said.

DHS plans to consolidate six WANs to its OneNet, fold 18 data centers into two and combine six e-mail systems into one, he said. The target date to accomplish this is early next year.

The infrastructure transformation now has momentum, said Lee Holcomb, outgoing DHS chief technology officer.

More news on related topics: Communications / Networks, Business Process Management, Homeland Security, Management, IT Management



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