USDA Telecommunications

To its credit, the Agriculture Department (USDA) has identified opportunities to significantly reduce telecommunications costs by consolidating and optimizing its FTS 2000 telecommunications services. However, USDA has not pursued all those options and, as a result, is wasting millions of dollars each year. USDA has hundreds of field offices where multiple USDA agencies, located in the same building or geographic site, obtain and use separate, and often redundant, telecommunications services. USDA officials estimate that the agency could, during the next four years, save up to $800,000 each month--as much as 26 percent of the agency's total annual FTS 2000 telecommunications costs--or a total of $40 million. USDA's Office of Information Resources Management, which manages the agency's telecommunications resources, has not effectively carried out its responsibility to reduce telecommunications costs.

GAO found that: (1) USDA has identified opportunities to significantly reduce telecommunications costs by consolidating and optimizing its FTS 2000 services, but it has not acted on all the identified opportunities and is wasting millions of dollars each year; (2) USDA field offices are failing to coordinate their FTS 2000 acquisitions and are often purchasing redundant systems; (3) USDA could save up to $10 million a year if its field offices consolidate and optimize FTS 2000 services; (4) the USDA Office of Information Resources Management (OIRM) has not effectively carried out its responsibility to reduce telecommunications costs; (5) some USDA agencies are independently consolidating and optimizing FTS 2000 services and reducing telecommunication costs; (6) senior USDA officials state that leadership transitions have made it difficult for OIRM to implement FTS 2000 consolidation plans; and (7) although USDA is reducing and consolidating its field offices, it has no operational plan or time frame for consolidating and optimizing telecommunications at the centers or to ensure that FTS 2000 is cost-effectively used.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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