http://www.fcw.com/article88625-04-19-05-Web
By Florence Olsen
April 19, 2005
Federal agencies spent up to $2 billion last year reinventing the
wheel to make federal information systems more secure, an Office of
Management and Budget official said this week. That amount was nearly
a half of the $4.2 billion that federal agencies spent on information
systems security in fiscal 2004.
Glenn Schlarman, chief of the information policy branch at OMB, said
an interagency task force representing all federal agencies is
appealing to industry officials for ideas to help reduce those costs
and improve information security governmentwide.
"We already know we're going to save a bunch of money," said John
Sindelar, deputy associate administrator of the Office of
Governmentwide Policy at the General Services Administration. He and
Schlarman were among more than a half-dozen federal officials who
spoke on Monday at an Enterprise Cybersecurity Practioners Day in
Washington, D.C.
Sindelar is also project executive for the interagency effort to
improve information systems security by consolidating certain security
functions and adopting government and industry best practices,
procedures and policies.
Systems integrators who attended the industry event were asked to
submit information about approaches they have found to be successful
in creating large-scale information security programs. Government
officials also have issued an official request for information about
information systems security.
Federal officials said they plan to take that information, which must
be submitted by May 5, and incorporate it into business case documents
that federal agencies will review and submit in final form with their
budget requests for fiscal 2007.
OMB requires federal agencies to submit business cases to justify
their spending on information security. The deadline for submitting
business cases for consideration during the fiscal 2007 budget
planning process is September 2005.
Sindelar said governmentwide procurements of information security
hardware, software and services could begin as early as fiscal 2006
and would extend to fiscal 2007 and beyond. "We're interested in ideas
not only for what we procure but also how we procure it," he said.
_________________________________________
InfoSec News
http://www.infosecnews.org
