Cuomo Plans to Cut Waste, Improve Government Efficiency

Measures Expected to Save $600 Million Over a Five Year Period

Governor Cuomo today announced transformative steps that his administration is taking to change the way state government does business in order to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

The reforms will focus on five specific areas, including transforming the procurement process by harnessing the state's full buying power to reduce costs, eliminating costly empty space leased by the state, modernizing information technology systems, improving customer service, and streamlining business services.

These reforms are expected to save taxpayers $600 million in all funds over five years including $100 million in all funds over the next fiscal year.

"State government must be reinvented from top to bottom to cut inefficiencies and reduce waste," Governor Cuomo said.

"We can no longer accept the status quo where the excess of government falls on the backs of taxpayers, who receive little in return. It is a new day in Albany, and these steps will transform government to work better for the people at a lower cost."

The series of projects directed by the Governor are designed to make state government more responsive and nimble. Under the new approach to state operations, current procedures will be compared to best practices to identify ways to save money and find efficiencies.

Performance metrics will be used to measure results, increase accountability, and evaluate effectiveness. The steps are designed to produce budget savings over a multi-year period while improving the delivery of public services.

Steps taken by the Cuomo Administration include:

Procurement Transformation

Cuomo has initiated sweeping changes to the state government procurement process that focus on implementing best practices and identifying opportunities for savings. The new procurement process, called strategic sourcing, will leverage the state's buying power and balance the needs of achieving savings with the administration's policy goals of encouraging small businesses and MWBEs.

In June, Director of State Operations Howard Glaser and Budget Director Robert Megna asked all state agencies to suspend individual contract renewals and purchases in 15 categories, including food, IT services, software, and office supplies, and instead use the strategic sourcing method for procurement.

Strategic sourcing uses a structured, market-based process to gather data and use the state's substantial buying power to secure the best value in purchasing. The initial purchases under strategic sourcing are targeted to save $100 million in FY 2012-13, and could produce almost $600 million in cumulative savings over 5 years.

Using strategic sourcing, the Office of General Services modified the road salt bidding process to generate $2.4 million in savings for the state and $7.1 million in savings for local governments. The contract had not been bid on competitively for nearly ten years and under the new process the state paid less per ton.

Real Estate Optimization

For years, New York State's real estate portfolio has been poorly managed, leading to vacancy rates greater than 25%, poor construction and building management, and misplaced investments in aging facilities.

Upon taking office, Governor Cuomo ordered an extensive analysis to ensure government-paid-for space is fully-utilized. Efforts are now underway to move agencies in leased locations into state-owned buildings as leases expire.

A major restacking initiative has been launched to fill vacated state-owned office space in the Albany metropolitan region. The project will be conducted in 3 phases over the next 18 months and is projected to save $9 million in FY 2012-2013 and eliminate 3,000 empty desks.

Plans are currently under review for a centralized real estate office that will coordinate management to drive efficiency, ensure proper financial stewardship, and improve customer service. Governor Cuomo's administration is continuing to review consolidation options for state-owned space in New York City.

Technology Transformation

Cuomo has launched five initiatives to consolidate information technology (IT) processes and infrastructure that will save hundreds of millions of dollars, implement uniform standards, and improve reliability and service.

Governor Cuomo's actions are in response to reports that showed the old approaches to IT management led to inefficient and redundant delivery of services, hampering statewide technology initiatives and wasting taxpayer dollars.

A recent audit revealed that although many of the state's thousands of computer servers operate at less than half-capacity, agencies continue to purchase new servers for data storage.

Five foundational projects have been launched: data center consolidation, enterprise identity and access management, email consolidation, help desk consolidation, and voice-over-internet protocol telecommunications.

The projects are estimated to be completed within three years. Governor Cuomo has also directed state agencies to conduct a comprehensive software and hardware scan of department networks to create for the first time a statewide inventory of IT assets. This scan will form the basis for data center consolidation, elimination of duplicative software applications, and standardization of IT platforms.

White House to Shut Hundreds of Duplicative Data Centers

Data Center Consolidation Initiative to Save Taxpayers Billions

WASHINGTON, D.C. --- Today, as part of the President’s Campaign to Cut Waste, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is announcing that, it will shut down a total of 373 data centers by the end of 2012, including 178 in 2012 alone. See map and data.

Today’s announcement puts the Administration ahead of schedule in meeting the President's goal of shutting down 800 data centers by 2015, a move that is expected to save taxpayers more than $3 billion.

“Duplication, waste, and inefficiency are never acceptable, but it is especially intolerable in these challenging budgetary times,” said Jeffrey Zients, Federal Chief Performance Officer and OMB’s Deputy Director for Management.

"As part of the Campaign to Cut Waste, President Obama has directed his Administration to aggressively root out misspent tax dollars in agencies across the government to ensure we are spending tax dollars wisely."

A data center is a facility for the storage, management, and dissemination of data and information, housing computer systems and associated components and generally includes backup power supplies, environmental controls (air conditioning, fire suppression, etc.) and special security devices. Data centers can be as a big as a building or as small as a closet, located in leased, owned, collocated, or stand-alone facilities.

Since 1998, the number of Federal data centers rose from 432 to more than 2,000 – a proliferation of infrastructure that has created unnecessary and redundant systems and applications – while the private sector has been shrinking its data-center footprint. Moreover, those facilities have been using only 27 percent of their computer power on average even though taxpayers are footing the bill for the entire infrastructure, real estate and energy costs. Data centers can consume 200 times the electricity as standard office spaces.

To date, agencies have closed 81 data centers and will close 114 more during this calendar year for a total of 195 in 2011.This represents an increase in both planned and actual closures from the data released in April 2011. As agencies have continued to update their data center inventories, they have increased their planned closures, demonstrating the seriousness in which they are attacking waste.

“With data centers that run as large as three and a half football fields, shutting down excess datacenters will save taxpayers billions of dollars by cutting costs for infrastructure, real estate and energy. At the same time, it will improve the security of government data and allow us to focus on leveraging technology to make government services work better for the American people,” said U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra.

The data centers being added to the shut down list today range from a 195,000 square foot Department of Homeland Security facility in Alabama that is roughly the size of three-and- a-half football fields to four Department of Agriculture data centers in the same zip code, each of which is less than 1,000 square feet.

In another instance, the Department of the Treasury is closing a nearly 13,000 square foot facility in Lanham, Maryland. This facility has 75 racks, hosts 250 servers, and costs taxpayers more than $400,000 a year for leasing and electricity alone.

The Campaign to Cut Waste is an effort to hunt down and eliminate misspent tax dollars in every agency and department across the federal government. The Campaign builds on the Administration’s ongoing effort to make government more efficient, effective and accountable to the American people. You can read more about that work here.

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The Campaign To Cut Waste

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden speak about the Administration's ongoing effort to make government more accountable to the American people through The Campaign to Cut Waste.

The Campaign To Cut Waste will build on the Accountable Government Initiative, led by OMB Director Jacob Lew and OMB's Deputy Director for Management and Federal Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients, which has already tackled waste and inefficiency in many areas across government, cutting contracting spending for the first time in 13 years, identifying $3 billion in information technology savings, shutting down duplicative data centers and getting rid of excess federal real estate.

This campaign continues the steps the administration has taken to date to reduce government waste and make government work better for the American people.