Agency CIOs post IT progress updates

Federal government chief information officers have started posting agency information technology reform updates related to objectives outlined in the Office of Management and Budget’s 25-Point Plan to Reform Federal IT.

The status reports come approximately 18 months after the December 2010 release of the OMB initiative’s release.

On Monday, Office of Personnel Management CIO Matthew Perry, General Services Administration CIO Casey Coleman, Department of Energy Acting CIO Robert Brese and Department of Commerce CIO Simon Szykman posted updates with more expected in the coming days.

Highlights:

Office of Personnel Management

• The agency has completed five of eight TechStat reviews planned for this year.
• The reviews have led to stronger communication channels among executive, program management, and technical staff of one major investment for the Health Claims Data Warehouse investment; stronger and more rigorous planning processes and techniques for the USA Staffing program; an the identification of a cost avoidance of $153.3 Million in FY2012 for agencies/customers the USA Staffing program.
• The agencies has also moved the following services to the cloud: migrated the agency’s public website to a cloud service hosted by AT&T; migrated OPM’s core financial, budget and procurement system, known as the Consolidated Business Information System (CBIS), to a cloud service provided by Accenture; migrated facilities asset management to a cloud service provided by Sunflower Systems Asset Management Solutions; Migrated USAJOBS, the US government’s official program for Federal jobs and employment information, to a private cloud hosted by OPM; migrated to a government cloud solution, the Electronic Capital Planning & Investment Control (eCPIC) application, for automating the preparation and submission of information technology (IT) budget data to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) through the Federal IT Dashboard.
• The agency has significantly strengthened CIO authorities. For example, in November 2011, OPM Director John Berry issued a formal memorandum about CIO accountability to OPM’s senior executives. He clarified the CIO’s accountability for lowering operational costs, terminating and turning around troubled investments, and delivering meaningful functionality, while instructing the executives to be actively engaged with the CIO in the selection, assessment, and management of IT.

General Services Administration

• TechStat provided a new lens that helped determine the best approach for the short- and long-term success of our IT portfolio, Coleman said. For instance, by reviewing the Identity Credential and Access Management investment, GSA significantly reduced the required number of resource-intensive system integrations and accelerated project delivery time by 18 months. By cutting inefficiency and boosting productivity through the TechStat process, GSA identified more than $600,000 in resources that were then diverted to other programmatic areas.
• Last June, GSA transitioned the agency’s email from a traditional, hardware-heavy platform to a cutting edge, cloud-based system. Doing so has uncovered tremendous savings and tangible benefits including faster upgrades, lower management costs, reduced waste and redundancy, and improved agency-wide collaborative capacity. The cloud is expected to reduce email system operating costs by 50% – nearly $3 million – each year.
• GSA is embarking on a comprehensive IT portfolio review designed to ensure an enterprise approach to information technology within the Agency. Past consolidation and cloud delivery successes such as GSA’s transition to the Google platform are a springboard to streamline GSA’s enterprise content management, internal acquisition tools, customer management capabilities and infrastructure. Consistent with the OMB Shared Service plans, GSA will consolidate several regional content management systems into the enterprise solution. We will also deliver a major component of GSA’s Solicitation Writing System supporting enterprise internal acquisition.

Department of Energy

• In August 2011, DOE revamped its online presence by launching Energy.gov and delivering a single platform solution through an open-source content management system and cloud hosting environment. Ultimately, the website reform effort aims to save taxpayers more than $10 million per year. Within the past year alone, the agency saved taxpayers over $1 million by not building new websites and consolidating others.
• DOE partnered with the General Services Administration to share the services of a cloud-based tool for managing our capital IT investment portfolios, which will reduce software maintenance as well as deliver improved analytical tools to portfolio managers. This tool is expected to launch in November.
• In June, DOE will migrate its Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to a GSA-approved, cloud-based, shared service provider to eliminate an additional $1 million/year in wasteful spending, while improving the quality of service.
• DOE established a Corporate IT Project Management Office to lead integrated project teams (IPT) for projects which span multiple program lines, improving the effective and efficient delivery of the project’s goals. The office has drafted an Enterprise-wide IT project management framework to leverage best industry practices and improve the opportunity for success.
• DOE has conducted six TechStat reviews.

Department of Commerce

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has moved to the cloud for enterprise email, calendar, and collaboration services.
• The Census Bureau is using cloud computing technology to front the Census Bureau’s 2010 Census website, provide a more cost-effective and reliable delivery of its web content and services to its employees and the public.
• Since the publication of OMB’s IT management reform agenda, DOC has held several TechStat reviews, focusing on the Department’s highest risk investments. Commerce was among the first agency to conduct a bureau-level TechStat review back in June of 2011, and is currently planning a second one.
• Commerce will soon be issuing an IT Portfolio Management Policy aimed at strengthening IT management authorities within the Department in order to enable more effective management of the portfolio (in reality, the portfolio of portfolios) that constitute DOC’s $2.3 billion in annual IT spending. The policy will reshape how IT is managed from an enterprise architecture perspective, how spending is approved and how oversight of major IT investments is conducted, and will enable greater consolidation of commodity IT purchasing, contracting, infrastructure, and services through an increased use of shared service models within and across bureaus.