Data center consolidation initiative of the US Department of Homeland Security can benefit from a more granular inventory of its existing data center and IT assets and from an update to its consolidation plan, according to a recent audit of the program.

A new report by the DHS Office of Inspector General pointed out several shortcomings of the consolidation project, including a lack of complete inventory of existing data centers, as well as of existing hardware and software. The Inspector General also recommended that the DHS create consolidated data center floor plan to guide the process.

Another recommendation for improvement of the overall consolidation plan were to detail the decommissioning process for legacy data centers and to adjust the plan to conform to the on-going government-wide data center consolidation initiative, which DHS CIO Richard Spires happens to be overseeing. Finally, the Inspector General recommended that the department’s plans incorporate "lessons learned" from other successful public- and private-sector consolidation efforts.

In his response to the Inspector General’s assertion that his department does not have an accurate data center inventory, Spires wrote that data center contents were "dynamic" and that the department used a three-phase process for migration planning: going from a high-level overview in the first phase to a more detailed inventory in the final phase. "Data center contents are dynamic, and this three-phased approach provides a sufficient amount of detail minimizing inventory rework."

Read a DCD FOCUS interview with DHS CIO Richard Spires in the latest edition of FOCUS magazine.

Spires’ response was partly addressing an issue the report raised with disparate numbers of total data centers on hand that were reported at different times. In a fiscal year 2010 report to Congress, DHS said it had 29 data centers, while a response to an August 2009 data call by the Office of Management and Budget listed 60 data centers. Yet another report in the department’s Office of the CIO (OCIO) Consolidation Management Plan stated there were 61 data centers.

Spires discredited figures included in the aforementioned August 2009 data call by the OMB, referenced by the new Inspector General report. He said his office, OCIO, did not administer the report and did not have a chance to validate it. The OMB went directly to agencies that fall under the DHS umbrella. Some agencies reported data centers on hand that did not fall under OCIO’s definition of data centers.

The largest error was a report of two data centers by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, constituting 400,000 sq ft total. Neither of the two facilities included any data application hosting space and were not included in responses to DHS’s own data call. This space constituted about 71 percent of total space reported to the OMB, Spires wrote.

Responding to the report’s call for adjustment of migration plans, Spires wrote that the DHS was in the process of updating them to include application information in the recent inventory collection.

As to the need to use lessons learned from other similar projects, the CIO wrote that his department was open to all best practices that "address the primary concerns of DHS consolidation effort" and would research best practices from other agencies to incorporate methods that apply.