OMB to give CIOs IT hunting license through broadening of authorities

The Office of Management and Budget is preparing to mandate changes to how agencies designate both the title and the role of their chief information officer.

Steven VanRoekel, the federal CIO, said the initiative is about giving CIOs the ability to reach into the dark corners of the agency where IT spending hides.

He said CIOs need "to have the authority, the seat at the table in the Investment Review Board and then reach down and look at that. We are looking at starting to institutionalize that. This office put out a memo about a year ago — the first one that was issued by me on this topic — and we've been really working hard to drive that behavior."

The hidden IT is just one example of why OMB believes CIOs need more oversight and authority. VanRoekel said there are too many instances where the CIO doesn't know his or her agency is spending on IT until it's basically too late.

This would be OMB's second major modification to give CIOs more authority over their bureaus. In August 2011, OMB issued a memo putting CIOs in charge of all commodity IT spending across their agency.

-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com
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OMB outlines expanded roles for federal CIOs

The White House budget director, Jack Lew, directed agency leaders to ensure their chief information officers are responsible for "true portfolio management for all IT [information technology]" and not "just policymaking."

In a new memo, Lew outlined four areas where CIOs should have a lead role:

• Governance of agencies' IT portfolios.
• Commodity IT purchases, such as data centers, desktops, email and business systems.
• Management of large IT projects and programs.
• Information security programs.

-Nicole Blake Johnson, FederalTimes.com
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Sen. Tom Carper: An IT champion by necessity

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) wants the federal government to achieve better results for less money, and he believes IT is one way to reach that goal.


That belief has led Carper, Delaware’s senior senator, to spend the past few years championing IT-related issues on Capitol Hill, including cybersecurity and IT management reform.


IT might not be the juiciest area to oversee, but it speaks to Carper’s main objective: improving government performance and efficiency.

In April, Carper introduced legislation that would put elements of the administration’s IT management reform plan into law.


The bill would require agency CIOs and the Office of Management and Budget to conduct systematic reviews of IT projects that are experiencing performance problems. It would also codify the federal IT Dashboard and increase congressional oversight of IT.

Carper proposed the bill — called the Information Technology Investment Management Act of 2011 (S. 801) — in response to a series of hearings he has held in the past three years to examine federal agencies’ management of costly high-risk IT projects.

Carper, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services and International Security Subcommittee, introduced the new bill the same day his subcommittee held a hearing on the progress of IT reform. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and fellow IT champions Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) co-sponsored the bill.


Carper said he proposed the legislation to make sure programs in place now will continue beyond the tenure of Kundra (who announced his resignation in June) and the current administration.

Carper said the bill includes baseline cost, schedule and performance overruns that would trigger reviews by agency CIOs or the federal CIO. The metrics would give executive branch officials insight into whether they should take dramatic action and perhaps pull the plug on a failing project, he added.

-Alyah Khan, FCW.com
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ACT-IAC Recommends New Approach to Sustaining Federal Financial Management Systems

FAIRFAX, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The American Council for Technology’s Industry Advisory Council (IAC) today released a report it has provided to the Office of Management and Budget with recommendations on how to improve the sustainability of Federal financial management systems. The findings and recommendations were shared with OMB and the Federal Chief Financial Officer’s Council prior to the report’s release.


The Administration has embarked upon a major initiative to improve the acquisition and management of the Federal government’s information technology assets (see the Federal CIO’s 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal Information Technology Management, December 9, 2010). A key part of this strategy is to replace large-scale systems acquisitions with a more segmented approach that focuses on business needs. The OMB Office of Federal Financial Management asked ACT-IAC to provide industry recommendations on how to apply this new strategy to Federal financial management systems. IAC was asked to address four questions:

1.Given that agencies usually maintain a hybrid environment including modernized system components integrated with legacy systems, how can agencies most effectively maintain functionality and improve performance over time? Is change management of this magnitude within the capability of most Federal agencies?

2.When is a system truly on its “last legs”? What criteria should be used to make decisions between incremental investments in an existing system and larger investments in a modernization initiative?

3.Is there a way to incentivize software providers to introduce upgrades in a manner that best serves the taxpayer?

4.What new paradigms exist or are just now emerging that might help apply game changing approaches to the first three questions?

In response to this request, IAC assembled a working group of experienced subject matter experts from 22 companies in the financial and information technology industries. The working group was chaired by Anne Reed (ASI Government) and Andrew McLauchlin (CGI). The working group met over the course of the spring to gather information and form conclusions and recommendations. In accordance with ACT-IAC principles, it operated in a collaborative and vendor-neutral manner that focused on improving government. The final report was a consensus document with recommendations that were unanimously supported by all members of the working group. The 73 page report was officially submitted to OMB on June 24, 2011.

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Portfolio management key to federal financial systems, says ACT-IAC paper

Federal agencies should take a portfolio management approach to financial management system modernization in which components that make up the totality of financial systems operate together even while existing in different stages of their lifecycle.

The paper, publically released June 29, was prepared at the request of the Office of Management and Budget by a financial management working group of the Fairfax, Va.-based industry association.

Report authors say federal officials should replace a world view that views financial management as a "system" for one that views automated components and manual processes together as providing a "capability."

Capability can be provided through improvements to legacy systems, new systems, upgrades or other initiatives.

Utilization of a data fusion engine that synthesizes data from a variety of systems would permit an agency operating in such a hybrid environment to nonetheless have an unified view of its financial data, the report adds.

Effective portfolio management does require an organization to have a business enterprise architecture, knowledge of system component costs, in general, a strong governance process, the report says. It suggests using a balanced scorecard to inform decisions of which components should get modernization priority.

-David Perera, FierceGovernmentIT.com
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