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GSA takes closer look at IT portfolio

The General Service Administration is ready to move ahead with the federal digital plan and will conduct a portfolio review to ensure the agency is taking an enterprise approach to IT, according to its CIO.

In a blog post for CIO.gov, GSA CIO Casey Coleman detailed her agency’s work in spearheading the government IT reform outlined by former U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra’s 25-point plan, and tying that work into the newly released framework to make federal services and information more accessible.  

GSA has seen “serious successes” with the reform effort, Coleman said, including implementing the TechStat process as a key aspect of the IT review process. TechStat requires agencies to take a closer look at IT investment that are lagging behind or have exceeded set budgets. U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel has said that TechStat has saved the government more than $4 billion since its 2010 rollout.

For GSA specifically, the review process helped the agency closely examine the identity credential and access management investment, ramp up its project delivery time as well as identify more than $600,000 in other resources that were then funneled to other programmatic areas, Coleman said.

The 25-point plan also requires the federal government to embrace a cloud-first policy, meaning agencies need to consider cloud options before making any new IT investments. Coleman said GSA’s migration to the cloud “tremendous savings” and benefits such as lower management costs and enhanced agencywide collaboration. But perhaps more important, Coleman added, the move to the cloud is expected to slash email system operating costs by 50 percent, amounting to $3 million annually.

With the backdrop of the shared services initiatives, PortfolioStat and efforts to build a digital government, GSA plans to launch a comprehensive IT portfolio review. Part of that work consists of merging multiple regional content management systems into the enterprise solution.

“The 25-Point Plan for Federal IT Reform is bold and ambitious, but GSA is proud to be a part of the accomplishments it has produced,” Coleman wrote. “We will use these successes as the foundation for more innovation and steeper savings.”

 

About the Author

Camille Tuutti is a former FCW staff writer who covered federal oversight and the workforce.

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