The Library of Congress is planning to create a Cloud Management Office (CMO) within its Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), according to the agency’s justification for its fiscal year (FY) 2023 budget request.
The agency requested $168.2 million for the OCIO, which represents a 9.6 percent increase from the FY2022 levels. Of that, $1.475 million would be for the new CMO.
“With rapidly advancing cloud technology and the Library’s adoption of a hybrid hosting model, structured cloud management is vital to ensure the most effective and cost-efficient use of the cloud for those applications and systems best suited to that solution,” the justification says.
The agency seeks to hire seven full-time employees to staff the CMO. The office would be staffed by one section chief, one cloud architect, two cloud engineers, two cloud account managers, and one cloud financial manager.
“The cloud has become an important part of our IT planning and [the agency’s] 2023 request seeks to establish a dedicated cloud management program that will enable us to integrate cloud solutions into our traditional IT infrastructure while supporting all of our business,” Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden told the House Appropriations subcommittee for the Legislative Branch April 27.
Overall, the Library of Congress is seeking to begin 10 new initiatives, including the CMO, that would increase the Library of Congress’ IT investments and total $24 million.
As far as cybersecurity initiatives, Library of Congress Chief Information Officer (CIO) Judith Conklin told the committee that much of the necessary cybersecurity budget increases were built into the recently enacted FY2022 omnibus.
However, Conklin warned that the Library is a constant target of cyberattacks from nation-state actors and other cyber threat actors and finds itself on the receiving end of approximately 200,000 attempted cyber intrusions each year. Conklin said that prior investment in cyber has the agency in a good place, though.
“With the committee support, we have invested smartly in cybersecurity over the last few years and our IT security team is officially on high alert over what is happening right now,” Conklin told the committee. “We are working to meet three strategic security objectives: IT centralization, stabilization, and optimization.”
In total, the Library of Congress is seeking a budget of $832.14 million for FY2023, representing a $31 million – or 3.9 percent – increase from enacted FY2022 levels.
