Report logs fed IT losses
The federal government will spend more than $75 million replacing IT hardware and services
"Attack on America: The Impact of the September 11th Terrorist Attacks on the Federal Government"
The federal government will spend more than $75 million replacing information technology hardware and services following the Sept. 11 attacks, and IT will play a major role in every step of recovery, according to a recent analysis.
Input, an IT market research firm, concluded in an analysis released Sept. 27 that the federal government has three priorities in responding to the terrorist attacks: recovery, mitigation and retribution. Furthermore, "security will become the single most important aspect of IT operations of the federal government," the analysis shows.
Input estimates that about 10 percent of the Pentagon's office space was destroyed when a hijacked airliner crashed into the building and in the ensuing fire. The IT infrastructure—workstations, servers, telecommunications, printers, scanners and other equipment—supporting nearly 4,000 federal employees will have to be replaced.
The organization estimates the military will spend more than $40 million on recovery hardware and services; the Customs Service about $15 million; the Securities and Exchange Commission about $5 million; and the Internal Revenue Service, the Secret Service and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission less than $5 million each.
"Recovery goes beyond the physical realm to include knowledge assets. Hard copies of data are gone; data stored on workstations and servers destroyed in the attacks are gone. The DOD has suffered a devastating loss in human knowledge," the Input report noted.
"Only data that was stored in off-site locations will be recoverable," the report said. "For example, the Secret Service office in New York City uploaded nightly backups to its headquarters in the District of Columbia. In the Pentagon, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service was able to maintain operations because of servers located in Ohio."
Input is finishing its federal IT forecast report and revising it to reflect the effects of the attack.
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