Gary Washington seeks to do everything that at least 4 other Department of Agriculture data stewards promised to do and yet succeeded.
The time the USDA tries, once again, to consolidate 17 disparate networks into one, is that Washington has genuine funding.
USDA will obtain $64 million from the Technology Modernization Fund Board for this project. This is the USDA’s fifth award under the TMF.
The Board of Directors of TMF has awarded two awards in the. . .
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Gary Washington seeks to do everything that at least 4 other Department of Agriculture data stewards promised to do and yet succeeded.
The time the USDA tries, once again, to consolidate 17 disparate networks into one, is that Washington has genuine funding.
USDA will obtain $64 million from the Technology Modernization Fund Board for this project. This is the USDA’s fifth award under the TMF.
TMF’s board of trustees also presented two more awards on June 21, giving the Department of Homeland Security $26. 9 million to modernize its Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) and $3. 9 million to the Federal Trade Commission to identify a Security Operations Center as a Service. (SOCaaS) to configure a Zero Trust architecture.
The board has presented 14 awards since winning $1 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021. He still has more than $650 million left in the account. On June 16, the Office of Management and Budget and the Administration of Corporate Services committed $100 million. Visitors enjoy projects that reduce wait times for the federal public, as well as excessive bureaucracy and other barriers.
While DHS signaled its preference for updating the HSIN in a data request in April, and the FTC’s move to 0 accept as true is a component of the Biden administration’s overall effort to improve cybersecurity, the USDA award is what Congress created the TMF in first position for: give agencies a boost to take the step of modernization.
“This investment will be used for USDANet start-up pricing that reduces the number of networks owned and operated through the USDA from 17 to 1 and will result in $734 million in savings/avoidance of estimated charges,” the TMF says. “The USDA’s decreased overall ownership charge means that project spaces can allocate a greater portion of their core infrastructure IT spend to public-facing programs that advertise retention, goodwill, and price for money. “
Washington said on a recent occasion sponsored by ACT-IAC on June 14 that this effort will be made with the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) vehicle through GSA.
“We presented our allocation plan. We have worked with our subcontractor and are working to reach the milestones we want to set,” Washington said at the HIA roundtable. “Lately we had a disconnect rate of around 54%, so we’re going to try to increase that rate aggressively. But the most important thing is that we are going to move to a controlled service model, where we can, like modernize the network periodically as we are supposed to do. It provides a better service because we provide the carck out and we also have a presence nationwide. “
The USDA awarded Lumen an ISIS project order in January that can last up to 11 years and be worth $1. 2 billion.
One of the key points for TMF’s board of directors to award an award is that the firm has an existing assignment and a current contract.
Previous attempts to consolidate and modernize USDA networks have struggled, but not due to a lack of evidence or will. For example, in 2011, then-Secretary Tom Vilsack, who is secretary again today, approved a report detailing 379 recommendations for the agency. operations and saving administrative cash to reinvest in citizen services.
Washington even turned to IT Centers of Excellence in 2018 to help get to the bottom of those networks and move programs to the cloud. While IT centers of excellence have helped the company move more programs and systems to the cloud, Washington said EIS is giving them the opportunity to reconsider how their aid infrastructure helps their cloud environment and cloud strategy.
Read more: IT Modernization
“It’s going to happen, and I’ll make sure I’m there to make sure it happens,” Washington said of the network’s consolidation. “We were very excited about it. Our control is delighted. In fact, I reported the secretary last week. So, it’s just a matter of getting our apparatus and making sure we accelerate the effective implementation of this solution. We have a lot to do with that.
When it comes to investments in DHS and ft. , the board continues to show its willingness to projects that are likely to have a broad impact on users or demonstrate how anything could work.
DHS released an RFI to modernize HSINs in April, industry commentary on how to move the existing platform from a complex, expensive, and not optimized platform for cellular and cloud-based functions to one that better supports end users and temporarily responds to national security. Threats
“DHS seeks to redefine data accessibility and create a modern, comprehensive data sharing platform based on cloud-based technologies to increase speed, mobility and access to unclassified data,” RFI said.
With TMF’s money, DHS says it will “rebuild its data sharing formula as a cloud-native platform with trendy equipment and technologies. advanced access and security, greater ability to share and discover content, and a greater focus on connecting HSIN partners to each other for closer collaboration. simple and secure access on cellular platforms and other devices.
DHS hopes the additional money will increase its modernization efforts to create a more flexible system, offering a greater user experience and less expensive.
The FTC board award, the fourth in particular around 0 I accept as true, is almost a proof of concept that other smaller agencies can take advantage of.
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The FTC will use the additional investment to upgrade its existing security operations center that is designed for government-run data centers and is suffering to scale to deal with developing cyber threats.
“[T]he FTC will drive its SOCaaS implementation forward by employing reliable security facilities and cloud service providers to host sensitive FTC data. This comprehensive technique will particularly lessen the threat of malicious actors executing ransomware or other cyber attacks,” TMF’s online page said. “It will also decrease the number of hours spent lately responding to cyber incident indicators. These hours can be reallocated to continue with the company’s many operating systems to review merge files and report fraud. The company is participating in this effort with other federal cybersecurity leaders, adding the Department of Homeland Security, to the percentage of most productive practices.
Raghav Vajjhala, the FTC’s CIO, said in July 2021 that some of its systems and programs are in the cloud and it is upgrading its network to be software-defined. These modernization efforts require a modern security architecture, he said.