It does not seem likely that Linda Cureton will have much time to settle in smoothly during her first days on the job. As one of her initial tasks, NASA's new CIO will be busy reviewing final drafts of requests for proposals to provide IT infrastructure services to help the agency implement its ambitious IT consolidation project.

To give Cureton (who starts as the agency's CIO this week) sufficient time to review RFP's for five contracts, including one for an enterprise data center, NASA scheduled the release of final solicitation notices for mid-October. The other contracts will be for consolidated end-user services, integrated communications services, Web enterprise service technologies and enterprise applications service technologies.

NASA's goals - outlined by Cureton's predecessor Bobby German after the agency received a $2.4 billion increase in its 2009 budget - are to improve IT management and security, user efficiency and service delivery. NASA's target completion date for data center consolidation and implementation of outsourced data center capabilities is March 2010, which the agency hopes will improve efficiency and security of its data center services.

The agency is targeting a five-percent reduction in its total data center costs by the last quarter of 2011. One of NASA's other targets is to upgrade its wide area fiber backbone to handle 10 Gb/s transport speed.

"As NASA embarks upon an IT transformation to align with the NASA mission, these goals will impact the entire agency," German wrote in the IT department's strategic plan. "Information and information technologies are crucial to achieving NASA's strategic goals, and NASA's IT environment will transform to support and prepare for changes in NASA's mission activities."

Prior to being appointed to her new position, Linda Cureton held the post of CIO and director of the Information Technology and Communications Directorate at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center.