Government Technology - August 2008 - (Page 28)

3 USE LESS WHO’S USING IT: VIRGINIA Sometimes the simplest way to cut costs is to use less of something. Virginia saves milWHY THEY’RE USING IT: BY REPLACING OLD COMPUTERS AND MONITORS WITH lions of dollars simply by using less energy MORE ENERGY-EFFICIENT MODELS, THE to run its information systems. STATE OF VIRGINIA ANTICIPATES $12 MILLION IN ENERGY SAVINGS WHEN IT As part of a 10-year contract with COMPLETES ITS REFRESH CYCLE IN 2009. Northrop Grumman to modernize the state’s information infrastructure, the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) is replacing 60,000 workstations and monitors when the state expects to finish refreshing its used by state employees. The new hard- desktop systems, VITA should see the cost ware, which complies with federal Energy of powering those systems shrink by $12 million a year. “That’s about a Star guidelines, consumes less 35 percent energy reduction,” power than the old technology. he said. VITA further optimizes perforVirginia’s modernization mance through configuration program includes plans for techniques, such as standardcontinuous hardware replaceizing the computers’ transition ments. “Every four years, we into sleep mode when not should be replacing everyin use. thing,” Stewart said. “All those things make a VITA expects to boost its big difference in energy conenergy efficiency even further sumption,” said Lem Stewart, LEM STEWART, CIO, VIRGINIA as it moves from its existing CIO of Virginia. By June 2009, JUICE STRATEGY: ENERGY CONSERVATION data center to two new ones, which also are designed and configured to consume less energy. One major project involves replacing 3,000 servers with 1,000 Energy Star-compliant machines running virtual servers. “I think our total environment is going to land somewhere between $15 million and $20 million a year [in energy savings],” Stewart said. Of course, replacing old technology with more efficient boxes requires a considerable investment, and it was more than VITA could afford to pay up front. The state solved this problem by having Northrop Grumman supply the needed funds. “We repay that investment over time through the benefits of what we’re achieving in modernization, the first of which is energy,” Stewart said. Once the state has used its savings to repay Northrop Grumman, it will keep the further savings that accrue. 4 AUG_08 SHARE ALIKE In California, about 70 local governments and parking authorities save money by buying parking citation processing services from the city of Inglewood. More than 20 years ago, Inglewood developed its mainframe-based Inglewood Citation Management Service (ICMS) in-house for its own use. “But it was really good,” said Michael Falkow, Inglewood’s assistant city administrator and CIO. So good, in fact, that several nearby cities asked to use it. Gradually the service grew to serve municipal customers as large as Oakland, San Diego and Sacramento. If ICMS didn’t exist, most of those cities would have outsourced the job to a commercial citation processing vendor rather than buy their own software, Falkow said. As a nonprofit entity, ICMS could offer better pricing than private-sector competitors. Also, cities could do business easily with Inglewood, since they didn’t have to conduct competitive procurements if they gave their business to another government agency, he said. Since running a mainframe system with in-house staff no longer made good busi- SHARE AND ness sense, Inglewood recently outsourced its citation processing work to one of its privatesector competitors, Duncan Parking Technologies of Harrison, Ark. Although it lost a few customers in the move, around 70 cities, airport authorities and universities now pay ICMS for the service. As a consortium buying services through ICMS, these customers still get a better deal than they would contracting with Duncan directly, Falkow said. “We have about 2.2 million citations that we command across these 70 some-odd agencies,” he explained. “They were able to give us an amazing price — a price that probably even Oakland, the STRATEGY: SHARED SERVICES WHO’S USING IT: INGLEWOOD, CALIF., AND OTHER PUBLIC ENTITIES RESPONSIBLE FOR PARKING ENFORCEMENT WHY THEY’RE USING IT: WORKING WITH INGLEWOOD’S CITATION MANAGEMENT SERVICE, APPROXIMATELY 70 ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES RECEIVE BETTER PRICING ON CITATION PROCESSING, DOCUMENT IMAGING AND COLLECTION SERVICES THAN THEY WOULD INDIVIDUALLY. biggest of our customers, would not likely have received if they had just gone separate.” ICMS also brokers other third-party services for its citation processing clients, including document imaging for parking tickets from Continental Data Graphics in Cypress, Calif., and collection services from Law Enforcement Systems Inc. in New York. In Virginia, VITA also is banking on shared services to cut costs. The state agency has invited local governments to use its IT facilities, including its data centers, disaster recovery center and telecommunications networks, said Stewart. The cost of running a data center is the same no matter how many users it supports, Stewart said. The more users there are, the lower the bill to each state customer. “And the theory on the other end is that those whom you’re providing the service to pay less because they’re in a much larger, leveraged environment than they are as individuals,” he said. 28 http://www.govtech.com

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Government Technology - August 2008 Contents Point of View The Last Mile Big Picture On the Scene Four Questions for... Net Gains A Government Technology® Industry Profile: CA CA Contents IT Network Management: State and Local Governments Face New Challenges MyFloridaNet Arkansas Department of Information Systems Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport Government Tightens Its Belt Rocking the Vote High-Speed Portal Project On Track Wi-Fi on a Shoestring From Paintball to Video Virtually Vulnerable How It Works Products signal:noise

Government Technology - August 2008

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