The Obama administration has 41 days left to convince Congress to allow more agile budgeting for information technology and must close data centers at a rate of about 12 per month through the end of 2011 in order to meet self-imposed deadlines found in its 25-point plan for restructuring federal information technology.

The White House held an event April 27 to highlight plan-related activity, also releasing a list of 137 data centers its says will be shuttered by Dec. 31, of which so far only 39 have been closed.

At the event, Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra said his cloud first initiative, which requires every agency to have one cloud solution in place by December 2011 and up to three cloud-based programs by June 2012, is making progress.

Fifteen agencies have told OMB they will move email to a cloud solution, a total of 100 email systems, said Kundra. The General Services Administration will release May 10 a request for proposal worth $2.5 billion to procure cloud-based email and collaboration software for agencies' use, he said.

But progress on two points has been slow, Kundra allowed. Point 17 of the 25-point plan calls for OMB and federal agencies to work with Congress to create IT budget models that align with modular development, and point 20 of the plan, calls on OMB and federal agencies to work with Congress to consolidate commodity IT spending under agency CIOs. 

"We're actually working very closely with Congress to make sure we're lining up budget with modular development and also consolidating commodity IT under departmental CIOs," Kundra said.  

Since OMB officials announced the 25-point plan on Dec. 9, 2010, OMB has been focused on its list of IT reform items: "IT program manager" is becoming an official federal title, Kundra released a federal cloud computing strategy and OMB advised agencies on how to host their own TechStat accountability sessions.

For more: 
- see the list of data centers that have been closed and are planned to close
- listen to the April 27 OMB event

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