Taming FITARA With IT Asset Management
Industry Perspective
Industry Perspective
1
Taming FITARA With IT Asset Management
Executive Summary Federal agencies are spending more resources than ever maintaining legacy information technology, making IT modernization critical. A hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee found that the federal government spent more than 75 percent of its fiscal 2015 IT budget on the operation and maintenance of legacy equipment. Some agencies are still using the old COBOL programming language, developed in the 1950s and ‘60s.
Unfortunately, compliance with FITARA requirements has proved difficult for many agencies. On the latest FITARA Scorecard, released in June, only one agency received an A (USAID, the first A awarded in the four scorecards released so far). The Department of Defense received an F. Seven agencies received a B, 10 a C and five a D. While 15 agencies’ grades remained the same, five dropped and only four improved.
But modernizing government IT is not simple. The acquisition and operation of IT was added to the Government Accountability Office’s list of high-risk activities in 2015. Time and again, agencies have found that simply buying new software does not necessarily result in a more modern and coherent information infrastructure. More often than not, new technology ends up running alongside legacy software and hardware, creating a more complex and inefficient environment.
Key to achieving FITARA’s goals is effective IT asset management. Software asset management (SAM) brings visibility to the agency’s IT environment, identifying what software is installed, what is actually being used and who is using it. Software asset management supports compliance with FITARA, and it also makes good business sense. According to Gartner, “by 2020, enterprises with an effective SAM practice will reclaim 25 percent to 30 percent of their total software spending, compared to enterprises that do not.”
In response to these challenges, Congress passed the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2015. The law requires a governmentwide inventory of IT assets and makes a Chief Information Officer (CIO) responsible for IT management and acquisition in each agency.
To learn more about how federal agencies can get a better handle on their IT inventory and spending, GovLoop partnered with Cherwell, a company specializing in IT management software solutions, and gained insights from Jeff Kelsey, Director of IT Asset Management Product Management at Cherwell.
2
Industry Perspective
FITARA’s Role in IT Management Federal agencies face unique challenges in managing increasingly complex IT environments. Demands for productivity, efficiency and service delivery are driving the digitization of government. At the same time, agencies operate under regulatory oversight, tight budgets, lengthy budget processes and demands for public transparency. All of this produces a low appetite for risk and puts a premium on efficiency. FITARA aims to reduce risk and improve efficiency through a standardized management structure and accountability. The goal of FITARA is to reduce waste and duplication through centralized governance for IT management and to enable Congress to monitor agencies’ progress. It establishes a CIO for each agency who will report directly to the head of the agency and be responsible for IT acquisitions. CIOs will work together to promote
3
collaboration between and among agencies to reduce duplication and to leverage the government’s buying power. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will establish metrics for cost avoidance and performance, and CIOs will report regularly to the OMB on progress. To enable these reforms, collaboration among agencies and the use of private-sector best practices for IT management are encouraged. To get that understanding, FITARA requires each agency to conduct a review of its IT portfolio.
Taming FITARA With IT Asset Management
What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You Agency enterprises tend to grow ad hoc, and over time it becomes difficult to keep track of resources as new hardware and software are acquired while legacy systems continue to run. Multiple licenses for the same software might be acquired by different organizations throughout the agency, creating waste. Software can be inappropriately shared, putting agencies at risk of violating licensing agreements. Multiple licenses can result in underuse of software if only a small percentage of the allowed seats under each license is being used. Agencies often have no clear idea
of how many seats actually are being used, or used regularly. There might also be competing or overlapping types of software in use within the agency, so that duplication can be hard to spot. FITARA compliance can help avoid these situations by ensuring that agencies have a clear view of what software is being used. Visibility into the software environment allows CIOs and administrators to ensure that employees have the software they need, and that the agency is not paying for software that is not being used.
4
Industry Perspective
The Value of Software Asset Management Having the right software becomes increasingly important as government relies more on IT for operations and citizen services. With the government’s increasing use of commercial off-the-shelf software, it is necessary for agencies to be able to effectively manage it to not only make sure they are making the best use of their IT investments but also that they are in compliance with government regulations and licensing provisions. Unfortunately, this common sense practice is not a simple job. There are multiple levels of complexity in software management.
Challenges The two primary tasks involved in software management are: • Knowing what is installed on machines across the enterprise • Reconciling that software with what has been purchased This is complicated by the fact that there might be no common language for describing these two things.
5
Software must be identified on machines that might be distributed in multiple geographic locations or on mobile devices with no fixed location. As anyone who has attempted to build a complete inventory of IT assets knows, discovery is not simple. Systems are dynamic and develop over time, often without an overall plan, and often documentation and institutional knowledge is incomplete. Scanning networks can take time because all devices might not be online at the same time, and software changes continuously as it is added, removed and updated. By the time a scan is complete, the network is likely to have changed, so discovery usually is a continuing process rather than a one-time event.
Taming FITARA With IT Asset Management
Automating the Task
Cherwell Asset Management
Tackling the job of software asset management requires a tool that can collect all the attributes of software in the agency enterprise, including versions and levels of patching and upgrades, and compare it to known software catalogs. This comparison allows the software to be properly recognized and enables reconciliation with entitlement data.
CherwellÂŽ Asset Management is designed to help agencies achieve regulatory and licensing compliance, as well as reductions in software costs and IT overhead. By integrating data on hardware and software inventory, application usage, license entitlements and IT purchases, agencies can retire old spreadsheets and seamlessly track and manage IT investments from purchase through retirement.
You also need the ability to categorize software, so you can tell if you have multiple products for the same task. For example, there could be office productivity suites, development platforms, antivirus and other types of software from different vendors, which can result in overlapping capabilities and waste. A modern software solution can automate these tasks for agencies, but just buying a tool will not do the job. Agencies need to also have a process in place to lay out how the information generated from the software tool will be compiled and used to improve decision-making. Putting a process in place requires an understanding of how software acquisition is done and who is responsible for it, who implements software and the workflow and lines of authority for these activities.
Cherwell Asset Management integrates seamlessly with Cherwell Service Management, populating the Cherwell Configuration Management Database with IT asset data, including granular reports on who is using what software, and how often. This data supports the service desk for effective incident, problem and change management, and enables FITARA compliance. Cherwell provides in-depth license analytics for complex software licensing rules that enables agencies to ensure compliance by comparing software usage with contracts and license entitlements.
Creating this process and implementing an automated tool to support it requires executive-level buy-in, which FITARA requirements should provide.
6
Industry Perspective
Case Studies Oregon’s Department of Public Safety Standards and Training
Standard Life Insurance
Oregon’s Department of Public Safety Standards and Training was using spreadsheets to track software licensing and usage. It needed a better understanding of software usage and more accurate tracking of IT investment. It was able to implement Cherwell Asset Management in four days, and found that an average of 5 percent of its software was not being used each year over the last five years. It has realized an estimated savings of $10,000 a year with Cherwell Asset Management and reduced the amount of time spent to prepare for software audits by an estimated 90 percent. It also has eliminated 90 percent of the cost to comply with software licensing.
Standard Life Insurance replaced Novell Zenworks Asset Management five years ago, selecting Cherwell Asset Management as a more modern technology for managing software. Standard Life estimates that Cherwell Asset Management enabled the company to identify that, on average, 20 percent of its software portfolio was not being used, which allowed it to save as much as $7 million a year. The company estimates that it has reduced the time spent preparing for software audits by 50 percent, and eliminated unplanned costs for compliance with software licensing. Federal agencies face IT management challenges similar to those in the private sector and in state and local government. It can expect to see similar benefits from the Cherwell Asset Management solution.
7
Taming FITARA With IT Asset Management
Conclusion Effective software asset management provides a solid foundation for agencies to improve their maintenance of legacy IT and to rationalize their entire software portfolio. It also paves the way for effective IT modernization. It provides the visibility into the software environment needed for compliance with FITARA and software licensing requirements.
Achieving these goals requires both the right technology and a process for implementing it and using the information it produces. With the support of stakeholders across agency organizations, the people and resources needed to put this powerful tool to work in your agency can be obtained. The result goes beyond regulatory compliance, enabling more costeffective agency operations and more efficient delivery of services to citizens.
About Cherwell Software
About GovLoop
Cherwell helps organizations perform their core functions and execute their missions with the use of intuitive technology for IT service management. Putting customers first to provide exceptional customer experience, Cherwell enables automation of routine tasks and simplifies delivery of IT services, freeing organizations to focus on executing and transforming core business activities.
GovLoop’s mission is to “connect government to improve government.” We aim to inspire publicsector professionals by serving as the knowledge network for government. GovLoop connects more than 250,000 members, fostering crossgovernment collaboration, solving common problems and advancing government careers. GovLoop is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with a team of dedicated professionals who share a commitment to connect and improve government.
To learn more about the power of flexibility of these solutions, visit www.cherwell.com.
For more information about this report, please reach out to info@govloop.com.
8
1152 15th Street NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20005 Phone: (202) 407-7421 | Fax: (202) 407-7501 www.govloop.com | @GovLoop