The Office of Management and Budget’s Data Center Optimization Initiative has problems, according to a new Government Accountability Office audit.

Most participating agencies haven’t made much progress, and some don’t even belong in the program.

“Of the 24 agencies required to participate in the Office of Management and Budget’s Data Center Optimization Initiative, 22 collectively reported limited progress against OMB’s fiscal year 2018 performance targets,” the audit found. “Two agencies did not have a basis to report on progress as they do not have agency-owned data centers. For OMB’s five optimization targets, five agencies or less reported that they met or exceeded each of the targets.”

The situation isn’t likely to improve any time soon, as 17 of those 22 agencies reported they were not planning to meet the OMB targets by September 30, 2018. “This is concerning because the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act’s (FITARA) data center consolidation and optimization provisions, such as those that require agencies to report on optimization progress and cost savings, expire a day later on October 1, 2018,” auditors noted.

All 24 agencies did report success in optimizing their data centers, such as better energy efficiency and virtualizing systems for better performance. But they also reported facing challenges such as improving utilization of the centers and finding workers. As for OMB’s mandate to use automated monitoring tools to monitor server utilization, only four centers fully complied.

GAO recommended that Congress extend the time frame for data center consolidation and optimization. In addition, auditors recommended that 18 agencies complete their plans to implement data center monitoring tools and send those plans to OMB.

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