Formerly WRR (Workstation Reduction Ratio)
Last updated: May 24, 2023 at 12:38 pm PDTExecutive Order 13589 — Promoting Efficient Spending directs each agency to establish a plan for reducing the combined costs associated with employee information technology devices, among other things. The Department of Interior adopted this in OCIO Directive 2013-001. Beyond the purchase price of equipment, there are additional costs for software licensing, maintenance, and monitoring for each asset. Reducing the number of desktops and laptops that have been issued to employees has been identified by the Department as an area of potential cost savings.
In 2014, to help monitor and track progress towards this goal, the DOI Systems and Client Cabs approved the use of the machineRole attribute to classify computer objects in Enterprise Active Directory. The machineRole attribute has a numeric value, and a number has been assigned to each of the approved classifications. All Active Directory computer objects must have an appropriate machineRole attribute applied.
In the summer of 2021, the Bureau ACIO sent a memo to the ELT, Cost Center Managers, and AO’s with new required target metrics for workstation reduction. A copy of that memo is available on the ACIO’s Communication Library here.
All USGS Science Centers and offices are asked to get to a 1:1.2 ratio for workstations to employees, excluding scientific instrumentation by the end of FY 2022 and 1:1.1 ratio by the end of FY 2023.
Starting on November 1, 2021, USGS is requiring that the managedBy attribute of computer objects be populated with the primary user of the computer. By correlating a computer to a user, the OrgCode of the user can then be correlated to the computer. This information will be used to give executive leadership and business managers insight into system utilization and will be used for cost recovery efforts.
USGS IT staff should manage both the machineRole and managedBy attributes of all AD computer objects, and continue to work on optimizing the number of computers required, and the costs to maintain them, for conducting the USGS science mission.
Enterprise Software Deployment: The Enterprise Security Standards Team has developed a user-based software deployment strategy, which relies on ACIO-managed AD groups for application licensed users and the “managedBy” attribute of Computer objects in AD. Keeping the “managedBy” attribute up to date will have increasing importance as the list of applications deployed using this new strategy grows.
Resources and Reporting Information
Active Directory Integration: AD Attributes – EUS-Ops
Reporting information that is based off of OrgCode is under development. It will be used to give executive leadership and business managers insight into hardware utilization and will be used for cost recovery efforts.
To see summarized statistics from the classifications in eAD, visit the IT Transformation status page: http://ecomputing.usgs.gov/status/machinerole/
Workstation Ratio Reduction metrics, by OU, have also been added to the AD Status page: https://ecomputing.usgs.gov/status/AD/statuspagev2.html
USGS Workstation Scenarios v0.4 (download) – The purpose of this document is to provide machineRole guidance on some general scenarios that are found within the USGS. This matrix will not reflect all situations, but the scenarios listed can be used as a guideline for more complex situations.
More information on the classifications and how to set the machineRole attribute is below.
More information on how to set managedBy and guidance for special systems, such as lab equipment, computers uses by contractors, etc, is below.