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Treasury took the ‘meal deal’ approach to IT shared services

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5 months ago

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When it comes to IT shared services, Tony Arcadi likes to use a familiar analogy. The former Treasury Department chief information officer, who recently retired from federal service after 28 years, likes to compare centralized IT services to a value meal at a fast food restaurant where you get your sandwich, fries and drink for one price.

“I’ll have a number one or I’ll have a number two or I’ll have a number three. Let’s take the guesswork out of it. Let’s reduce the time to market so that we’re able to get out there with the information technology. Our goal was to reduce time to market, become more cost efficient and make sure all the security is integrated in the meal deal, if you will, so you don’t add it in later. It’s baked in,” Arcadi said during an “exit” interview on Ask the CIO. “I think the major driver for me was cost efficiency. Having a cost effective platform, reducing our attack surface so that we’ve got less border to protect and deploying common parts that can be assembled to deliver both commodity IT and mission specific IT.”

Tony Arcadi recently left federal service after 28 years, including the last four as the Treasury Department’s chief information officer.

The T-Cloud program, which Treasury awarded to SAIC in June 2023 under a seven-year, $1.3 billion deal, is a major driver of that shared services effort.

Through the contract, SAIC acts as a cloud broker and integrator that gives Treasury and its bureaus access to the major cloud providers like AWS, IBM, Microsoft, Google and Oracle.

Arcadi said T-Cloud was one of his team’s major accomplishments during his tenure.

“It’s fully integrated with the enterprise network. It’s fully integrated with enterprise identity system and is fully integrated with the enterprise security operations center (SOC), so T-Cloud allows rapid, cost effective, resilience and secure cloud deployments,” he said. “What we wanted to do there was allow the bureaus, the mind space and the organizational dedication to their mission-specific IT, whether it’s the collection of taxes, minting of coins, printing of money, payment of bills or whatever their very mission specific is, and not have that bureau’s mind space occupied by questions like how do I get to a cloud provider? How do I manage my network? Where do I get my phone service from? Who’s my email provider? These are not really substantive mission differentiators. We tried to handle those in a centralized, consolidated way, while giving that access to the bureaus to run their mission specific IT.”

Arcadi took a similar approach to create an enterprise SOC for those agency bureaus that needed help with cybersecurity.

The Treasury shared services operations center now offers enterprise-level protection as a shared service deployment for the smaller bureaus. Arcadi said these bureaus now have a 24/7 SOC operation.

“A lot of smaller bureaus at Treasury were able to benefit from the T-SOC shared service, and we had a number of bureaus migrated over when I left, and we’re continuing that migration,” he said.

Getting a little ‘New York’ on you

Deploying shared IT services is never a smooth process. Arcadi said there was a mix of reactions over the last several years that he received with some bureaus more excited than others.

“There’s two ways to deploy shared services, and I’m going to get a little ‘New York’ on you. I can come up to you and put a bag over your head, shove you in the back of the van and drive away, or I can pull up on a limo or a black car or taxi and you can sit in a back seat and we can have a conversation. You can see out the windows. So the analogy that we’re trying to bring in there is the ability to see out the windows. What we found in deploying shared services, both at Justice and here at Treasury, is we can really gain the confidence of the IT practitioners by giving them full visibility,” he said with a laugh. “They don’t have to be driving the car. They have to be able to see out the windows. They have to be able to have a conversation with the driver about where the driver is going. So going back to the analogy, with a bag over your head, where are you going? You can’t see. We’re not having a conversation. You’re uncomfortable, to say the least. This is not a pleasant experience. Or I pick you up and you sit in the back seat. We have a nice conversation. You can see where we are going and we talk about it. We arrive at the same place, but they are remarkably different experiences.”

Arcadi added his team set up governance structures for the bureaus to participate in and that helped convince them to eventually give up some of the control.

He said one of the best ways he convinced bureau CIOs to give up some control was to help them understand the benefits of the shared services, especially those capabilities the bureau didn’t have and couldn’t afford anytime soon.

Real cost savings

“We built our shared services to afford some flexibility, while at the same time ensuring they have all the appropriate cybersecurity accouterments,” he said. “We deployed shared services into every bureau of the department. Every bureau is a user of the network; every bureau is a user of the SOC; every bureau is a user of the identity management tools. The scale of that utilization varies by bureau, and I think that continuing that commodity IT consolidation under the current administration is going to be critical to their efforts to further introduce cost efficiency into government.”

The shared services approach led to real savings for the department. Arcadi said the move to an enterprise network, for example, saw a 46% cost reduction in per unit of service, which is basically a unit of throughput just from aggregating and consolidating the agency’s needs.

“We saw reduction in time to market, measured in months to years for the cloud. They were between 6 and 18 months off of the timeline to bring a product to market or put it into production,” he said. “We have the cost savings. We have the reduction in time to market, which means that we’re driving mission value more quickly. Then we’ve got security, which is just unachievable unless we band together.”

The post Treasury took the ‘meal deal’ approach to IT shared services first appeared on Federal News Network.

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Black Lives Matter Activist in Boston Pleads Guilty to Federal Fraud Charges – Scammed Donors to Fund Her Lifestyle

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23 hours ago

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September 24, 2025

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Screencap of YouTube video.

A Black Lives Matter activist in Boston named Monica Cannon-Grant pleaded guilty to federal charges this week, admitting that she scammed donors and used their money to fund her own lavish lifestyle.

Cannon-Grant was previously held up as an admired figure. The city of Boston named her the Bostonian of the year at one point for her ‘social justice activism’ and she was even recognized by the Boston Celtics basketball team for her efforts.

She is now facing a minimum of two years in prison.

The New York Post reports:

BLM-linked activist admits conning donors to fund her lavish lifestyle

A once-celebrated Boston social activist has pleaded guilty to defrauding donors — including Black Lives Matter — out of thousands of dollars that she used as a personal piggy bank.

Monica Cannon-Grant, 44, pleaded guilty Monday to 18 counts of fraud-related crimes that she committed with her late husband while operating their Violence in Boston (VIB) activists group, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts.

The activist scammed money — including $3,000 from a BLM group — while claiming it was to help feed children and run protests like one in 2020 over the murder of George Floyd and police violence.

Cannon-Grant also conned her way into getting $100,000 in federal pandemic-related unemployment benefits — which she used to pay off her personal auto loan and car insurance policy.

But she has now confessed to transferring funds to personal bank accounts to pay for rent, shopping sprees, delivery meals, visits to a nail salon — and even a summer vacation to Maryland.

Just amazing.

Here’s a local video report:

She should pay back every penny.

The post Black Lives Matter Activist in Boston Pleads Guilty to Federal Fraud Charges – Scammed Donors to Fund Her Lifestyle appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Keith Olbermann Backpedals Furiously With Apology for Threatening CNN’s Scott Jennings – Jennings Responds (VIDEO)

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23 hours ago

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September 24, 2025

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As the Gateway Pundit reported yesterday, former MSNBC host and generally unhinged leftist Keith Olbermann, appeared to threaten CNN’s conservative pundit Scott Jennings on Twitter saying, ‘You’re next motherf**ker.’

Well, Olbermann may have gotten a phone call or a visit from the FBI because today he walked back those comments with a full-throated apology.

RedState has an update:

To quickly recap, Scott Jennings, a Salem Media Network radio host and conservative CNN political commentator, reacted to breaking news on Monday that Kimmel had been reinstated by tweeting, “So basically his employer suspended him for being an insensitive pr**k, and we don’t live in an authoritarian regime? Got it.”

This enraged Olbermann, who proceeded to tweet what many, including Jennings, perceived to be a threat. “You’re next, motherf**ker. But keep mugging to the camera.” Jennings tagged Patel and included a screengrab of the tweets in response.

Though the FBI hasn’t commented as to whether an investigation was launched, Olbermann ostensibly appears to have thought twice about what he tweeted and deleted, apologizing profusely in tweets posted on Tuesday and claiming what he wrote was “misinterpreted”:

See Olbermann’s tweet below:

Scott Jennings, always a class act, offered this hilarious response:

Keith Olbermann really needs help. The guy is just so out of control.

The post Keith Olbermann Backpedals Furiously With Apology for Threatening CNN’s Scott Jennings – Jennings Responds (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Where is Lance Twiggs? Kirk Assassin’s Transgender Lover Has Vanished

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23 hours ago

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September 24, 2025

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Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson and roommate Lance Twiggs

Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson lived with his transgender partner – a male-to-female trans named Lance “Luna” Twiggs.

The FBI used Robinson’s texts with his transgender partner to solidify that Robinson was the assassin. Lance Twiggs has not been charged with any crime; however, federal authorities are still investigating.

Last week, Utah authorities released the text exchange between Tyler Robinson and his transgender lover, Lance Twiggs, sent shortly after Kirk’s assassination.

Utah County District Attorney Jeff Gray announced seven charges against Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson. They will also be seeking the death penalty.

Robinson was charged with:

– Count 1: Aggravated murder (capital offense)
– Count 2: Felony reckless discharge of a firearm causing bodily injury
– Count 3: Felony obstruction of justice for hiding the firearm
– Count 4: Felony obstruction of justice for discarding the clothing he wore during the shooting
– Count 5: Witness tampering for asking roommate to delete incriminating messages
– Count 6: Witness temperating for demanding trans roommate stay silent, and not speak to police
– Count 7: Commission of a violent offense in the presence of a child

Jeff Gray released the chilling texts between Tyler Robinson and his “love” Lance Twiggs.

Read the text exchange here:

Tyler Robinson texts with transgender lover Lance Twiggs / 1
Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson texts with transgender lover Lance Twiggs / 2

Lance Twiggs was reportedly cooperating with the FBI, however, according to the Daily Mail he has seemingly vanished.

“If [Lance Twiggs] ever comes back, it will be in a body bag,” a neighbor said to the Daily Mail. “That’s not a threat – I’m just saying that there are so many people who want a piece of him he’d be mad to show his face in public again. This was a generational event.”

The Daily Mail reported:

The Trans boyfriend of Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin has fled their former lovenest – and locals tell the Daily Mail they never want to see him again.

Lance Twiggs, 22, was led away for questioning when police swooped on the smart three-bed condo he shared with accused gunman Tyler Robinson, 22.

Shaken neighbors say the part time plumber has not been back to the $320,000 property in St. George, Utah – one declaring: ‘Good riddance. I never want to see either of them again.’

His beaten-up Infinity compact is still parked in his space with his work gear tossed across the back seat and a sandwich wrapper and a drink on the front passenger seat.

Upstairs lights have been left on for more than a week and notes and Amazon packages are piling up outside the home owned by Twiggs’s devout Mormon family.

The post Where is Lance Twiggs? Kirk Assassin’s Transgender Lover Has Vanished appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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