Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, took to the stage of the Adobe Digital Government Symposium on a mission to finally deliver agencies a way to upgrade their information technology.
The central fund \u2014 along with an Information Technology Modernization Board to advise it \u2014would establish a revolving pool managed by the General Services Administration and the Office of Management and Budget that agencies would apply to receive monies for certain IT projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Texas Republican said the new version of the bill addressed issues that stalled momentum last year, namely a December Congressional Budget Office assessment that it would cost $9 billion to implement, and was actively crafted with the assistance of the White House\u2019s Office of American Innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a panel on IT modernization appearing at the Adobe conference speculated on whether the MGT Act would go far enough to empower chief information officers to upgrade their agencies\u2019 IT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
“I think they\u2019ve got half of it right at this point, having a capital fund where you can park the money,” said Roger Baker, former CIO for the Department of Veterans Affairs. “One of my biggest winges, having been in government, was in 2010. We saved about $373 million and tried to carry it over into 2011 and that got taken back in a rescission, even though I had carryover authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“So now that you have got the vehicle there, you\u2019ve got to give CIOs ways to save the money.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Baker said that despite the authority CIOs were given as part of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, they still don\u2019t own the IT funding and need more authority to shutdown failing projects to find the savings for MGT projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Let\u2019s talk about putting in place something that enables \u2014 if it\u2019s not stopping a program, it\u2019s cutting back the spend \u2014 something that demonstrates that a program that\u2019s been developing for five years and has delivered nothing may have some problems.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Acting Department of Commerce CIO Rod Turk said the MGT would likely have a couple of “unintended consequences, mostly centered around the budgeting of the central fund, which agencies can draw from, but have to pay back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“In order to get the money, you are going to have to a program in there,” he said. “You are going to have to go before a board and say, \u2018I\u2019m going to spend the money for this, this is how I\u2019m going to do it, here\u2019s the timeline,\u2019 and at the end of that, you are going to have to pay the money back, which means you are going to have to put this into your budget process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“So I\u2019m thinking that even though that this is a technology discussion, it\u2019s going to drive some positive behaviors when it comes to the planning process as well as budgeting process as it moves forward.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turk added that he hopes that MGT will create a broader conversation about the program management, project management and budget facets of these IT projects for better solutions across government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The MGT Act will next head to the House for a vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While the bill is a step closer to IT modernization, some stakeholders want to see more CIO autonomy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":30750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":63,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[63,14],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2714],"class_list":["post-10710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud","category-it-networks"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"2P6R5TH7X5A73CEQWHHR642SJM","arc_canonical_url":"\/it-networks\/cloud\/2017\/05\/04\/can-the-mgt-act-unshackle-agency-cios-from-legacy-systems\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n