Labor Department looks to re-engineer IT services
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In a recent request for information, the Labor Department said it planned to build an IT and data communication environment that would integrate agency systems across the department.
The Department of Labor’s Office of the CIO plans to build an IT and data communication environment that would integrate agency programs across the department using a common set of enterprise systems and procedures.
In a recent request for information, the OCIO said the project would address agency system stovepipes, where the office is managing diverse set of overlapping IT applications on behalf of the agencies that make up the department.
“Each of the agencies’ IT systems currently uses a set of similar but divergent hosting, authentication and data communication infrastructures, including wide- and local-area networks, as well as policies to meet its business needs,” according to the notice.
To address the mixture, the OCIO said it was looking for one or more IT engineering contractors to help manage the department’s IT programs centrally in a “coordinated and cost effective manner [by] providing a complete set of IT operational and support services to an estimated 22,000 users.”
In addition to the integration effort, the OCIO announced it would lead a “DOLwide effort to transition the current limited and costly infrastructure into a modern, flexible, secure and scalable computing environment, which takes full advantage of mature and developing technologies to deliver ever increasing value to the DOL customers.”
The OCIO said it was particularly interested in adopting cloud-based technologies as well as “flexible and secure access from a variety of devices, including users’ own devices.”
To help pull the plan together the department is looking for support “of highly qualified IT engineering contractor(s), who have a proven record of providing innovative end-to-end IT engineering services.”
The RFI listed a number of different information engineering services it sought, including information and data engineering, mobile IT engineering, data center engineering and security and networking engineering, to name a few.
In the area of mobile IT engineering, the OCIO said it needed to revise existing processes for developing applications to accommodate new workflows and mobile data platforms.
“Evolving security policies and blurred lines between the personal and professional roles of wireless devices require innovative security approaches,” according to the RFI.
Development of cross-channel applications for various OS platforms, including Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and Window is also on the engineering shopping list.
In summarizing its networking requirements, the OCIO said, “robust, flexible and cost effective networking solutions will be critical to the OCIO’s ability to meet its mission.” The contractor should be ready to provide network engineering services “required to consolidate agency-specific networks in a common transport, security and access solution.”