Firms Want Say In Fate Of Troubled IT Projects
September 1, 2010
| 9:55 AM
Some vendor groups have asked the Obama administration to let contractors sit in on closed-door meetings that decide the fate of dozens of information technology projects that are worth a combined $30 billion, Nextgov.com reported.
The Office of Management and Budget on Aug. 23 put industry and federal project managers on notice that the administration will kill IT projects identified as high risk if chief information officers and OMB see no value in continuing them. As part of a shakeup in the management of IT projects, which are notoriously inadequate and off target by millions -- sometimes billions -- of dollars, OMB spent two weeks meeting with agency chief information officers to compile a list of 26 mission-critical systems that have hit road bumps. Some, including a project to automate retirement payments for federal employees, have been shelved temporarily.
Now they are under heightened review as OMB and agencies prepare the fiscal 2012 budget, with an eye toward scaling back or scrapping projects that do not make sense to maintain. The goal is to save projects by reprogramming them from top to bottom or, as a last resort, rebidding them. The budget will be released in February 2011.
Washington industry groups acknowledge the IT acquisition system needs retooling and they are making recommendations to administration officials on how they can revamp federal procurement rules. For starters, when federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra holds meetings -- or TechStat sessions -- with agency CIOs to discuss how to fix a project, he also should have independent sessions with the projects' contractors, trade association TechAmerica said.
"If a project ended up on the risk list, then he should plan to have TechStat Sessions with not only the government team but the industry team too," said Trey Hodgkins, vice president for national security and procurement policy for TechAmerica.
The industry group had a chance to relay some of its suggestions to Kundra on Aug. 20, three days before he released the list of risky projects.
TechAmerica has taken a hard-line stance that OMB should not impose blanket
suspensions of IT project categories. On June 28, the White House halted all financial management systems, even those that were performing well, to reduce each system's specifications as a way of accelerating rollouts. To read more, click here.
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