48%say data center consolidation is very or extremely important.

6%

17%

Top Federal InitiativesFor 2015 5

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy �rming up their �scal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus.

No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.

Also not predictable? These alarming stats:

of respondents say the ef�ciency and effectiveness of their agency’s IT performance is much improved year over year

saying they’re actuallyless effective.

IW Tip: Few organizations can stop determined attackers, even with unlimited funds to spend on tools and know-how. And, 35% cite lack of budget as the greatest barrier to effectively executing IT projects. So forget piling on tools. Instead, for 2015, work on “security soft skills” — correlating risk levels with agency priorities, getting better at diplomaticallykilling projects that need killing, and cultivating interagency partnerships to share expertise.

19% have enough employees

with the necessary cloud, security, and acquisition

skills to be effective

34%

7%characterize the level ofIT innovation within theiragencies as signi�cant

86%of respondents say cybersecurity/security is very or extremely important to their agencies.

32%saying there’s very little.

IW Tip: Just 37% have strategic IT plans that they follow closely, down from 45% last year. One sure bet: When ops goes ad hoc, BC/DR testing is one of the �rst things to slip. Remember: Teams play the way they practice. Restoring an IT service involves multiple interactions and tasks, the proper order of which you may not discover until you actually attempt a restore. So practice. As for tech, look closely at integrating storage system snapshots with your backup applications. You may be able to have the backup system’s job scheduler remotely trigger array snapshots, and then use these snapshots as the data source for backup jobs.

IW Tip: The U.S. Senate just voted — in a bi-partisan manner, no less — to compel agencies to comply with the 2010 Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative. Potential savings, while dif�cult to quantify, are just too signi�cant to ignore. If yours is among the agencies affected, don’t drag your feet. The FDCCI site, at fdcciconnect.com, offers a plethora of resources.

vs.

vs.

�lling gaps with contract workers/

integrators.

PRIORITY #1:LOCK DOWN DATA

69%say disaster recovery planning/continuity planning is very or extremely important.

PRIORITY #2: PLAN FORCALAMITIES LARGE AND SMALL

49%say data records management is very or extremelyimportant.

PRIORITY #3:DIGITIZE AND PROTECTRECORDS

IW Tip: If the IRS debacle taught agency CIOs anything it’s that Congress — not to mention the public — will not tolerate missing records. While there’s no evidence personnel deliberately destroyed evidence, the optics are terrible. Think of data as a strategic asset. As you digitize, focus on transparency and reuse. That means making data open and machine-readable by default. Get buy-in outside IT— if agency leaders (read: data owners) aren’t fully invested, it’s all too easy for that message to trickle down. You also need content and inventory specialists, planners and project managers, maybe a cloud expert. It takes a village.

49%

27%

say managing storage and data growth is very or extremely important.

PRIORITY #5:COPING WITH THE DATA DELUGE

IW Tip: We asked about the maintenance vs. innovation split; 26% spend 80% or more of their budgets maintaining existing systems.

Just 2% say the split is 20%/80%. Out-of-control storage growth is likely a key culprit.

Three key concepts for 2015: Solid statefor hot data and I/O-intensive applications, storage virtualization, and cloud as a storage tier. If you have more expertise than budget, consider scale-out storage designs or deduplicated distributed object storage systems like Ceph.

PRIORITY #4: CLOSE REDUNDANT FACILITIES

What’s at the bottom of the pile? IT process improvement/ITIL

24% Green IT

23% Social networktechnologies

21% VoIP

21% Bring your own device

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Source: InformationWeek Federal Government IT Priorities Survey of 123 federal government technology professionals, June 2014