Project Contact:  Michael Martinez, Chief, Technology Support & Capacity Management Branch

Project Description:
The Rural Development (RD) CIO is responsible for all aspects of providing a wide variety of IT solutions to all RD organizations and employees.  This includes services provided by the CIO staff itself such as business application design, development; and support as well as obtaining and overseeing the delivery of infrastructure services provided by external service providers, mainly other USDA entities such as International Technology Service (ITS) and National Information Technology Center (NITC).  These two service providers together provide Rural Development with a comprehensive set of IT infrastructure services including application hosting; telecommunications; telephony; mobile telecommunications; and end user computing.  Rural Development must work closely with these service providers to optimize existing services, negotiate advantageous service level agreements and closely monitor services received.

Vcentra was selected to provide IT infrastructure consulting support to the RD CIO and CIO staff.  Work will be focused on identifying and recommending technical solutions that provide RD with a more flexible and robust IT infrastructure; supporting RD in identifying and implementing cost saving opportunities; working with service providers and vendors to find ways to improve the infrastructure within funding constraints; serving as liaison with RD service providers to improve service models; improving IT infrastructure management and chargeback processes; and providing technical support to assure optimum usage of IT infrastructure components.  The scope of IT infrastructure includes a wide variety of technologies including application hosting technologies; end user technologies; mobile technologies; and telecommunication technologies.