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You have to hand it to Arnold Schwarzenegger. He knows how to take a rather mundane topic like data centers and turn it into a man versus machines battle.
In this case, the Governator has declared war against energy gobbling data centers. Under an executive order issued last week, Schwarzenegger has called on California government agencies to reduce energy consumption in their IT operations by 30% by 2012. Furthermore, he has ordered agencies to shrink the total amount of data center footage currently being utilized by 25% by July of 2010 and by 50% by July of 2011.
All kidding aside, those are some pretty ambitious plans laid out by the California governor.
In a statement issued with the order, Schwarzenegger said the reductions are part of a larger roadmap he laid out to modernize the state’s technology infrastructure and to standardize government IT operations and information security.
“With today’s action we are acknowledging the progress that has been made, while laying the framework to make further improvements in the state’s IT operations,” he said in the statement. “This action will increase transparency in spending, promote greater cost savings and define specific targets to reduce energy usage in our IT systems and further consolidate services.”
Schwarzenegger began to make sweeping changes to the state technology operations in 2007 when he established the Office of the State Chief Information Officer. He appointed Teri Takai into the role, who had served as Director of the Michigan Department of Information Technology since 2003. Prior to moving into government Takai had worked in IT at Ford Motor Company for 30 years.
Takai was handed a mandate to upgrade the state’s aging IT infrastructure and a year ago Scwarzenegger gave her an additional target to achieve $1.5 billion in cost savings.
The order issued last week also calls on state agencies, departments, boards, and bureaus to establish their own CIOs. The CIOs are being directed to conform to state IT policies and enterprise architecture, which includes transitioning over to a shared e-mail encryption system by June of 2010 and a shared e-mail system by June of 2011.
Getting a massive bureaucracy the size of the State of California’s to work in concert is no easy task, so the Governor deserves some credit for establishing ambitious targets and laying out a roadmap to get there.
He also deserves credit for mandating tough energy reduction and data center consolidation goals. It won’t be easy, but he’s been on both sides of the man versus machine battle before.
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