Cloud-based TMF projects ramping up
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Although the Technology Modernization Fund has awarded almost $60 million to four cloud projects so far, agencies are slow in spending it.
Although the Technology Modernization Fund has awarded almost $60 million to four cloud projects so far, agencies so far are slow in spending it.
In a Feb. 11 post to TMF's Awarded Projects webpage, the TMF board listed all seven projects, with their accompanying awards, as well as the "spend to date" since they were named.
Of the $89 million in total allocations noted on the page for the projects, only one agency has tapped into its funding: The Department of Housing and Urban Development's spend of $4,568,028 of its $20 million award for mainframe migration. The project aims to modernize the code base on systems that support more than 100 HUD grant, subsidy and loan programs and move operations to a mainframe database in the cloud. According to HUD estimates, the TMF site said, the code modernization and migration will save $8 million annually. HUD has selected contractors, but no money has been spent yet.
The Energy Department's cloud email consolidation and migration project will move 64 on-premises email systems to the cloud. So far $4 million of the $15.2 million award has been transferred to DOE and contractors have been selected, but the funds have not yet been spent.
TMF has not yet transferred funds to the other two cloud projects:
The Department of Agriculture's infrastructure optimization and cloud adoption effort, which plans a shared-services cloud platform for the initial migration of 10 applications has been awarded $5 million. The General Services Administration's $20.7 million NewPay payroll and work schedule management project will use a software-as-a-service solution and related interfaces for both payroll and work schedule and leave management.
The TMF board began awarding funds to agencies last summer when it announced the DOE, HUD and USDA winners. The latest award went to GSA’s NewPay service.
The TMF got another $25 million in funding in the budget deal that President Donald Trump signed on Feb. 15 to avoid another government shutdown.
The number falls well short of the $100 million appropriated for the fund in fiscal year 2018 and of the $150 million the House approved last year. The fund is intended to be revolving, with agencies paying back their awards with savings the funded projects produce.
A version of this article was first posted to FCW, a sibling site to GCN.