Accountability starts with Networx transition, data center consolidation
As part of Obama's accountable government initiative, OMB also plans to track on Performance.gov agencies' progress in other efforts such as cloud computing.
The White House will begin this fall publicly grading agency chief information officers on their efforts to upgrade and consolidate information technology operations, Office of Management and Budget officials said on Tuesday.
The move is part of a new accountability initiative President Obama announced to senior executives in the federal government via a letter on Tuesday. Since 2009, the Obama administration has monitored development of major technology systems on a website called the IT Dashboard, and the new rating tool will incorporate those results as well as cover additional ground within IT and throughout agency operations.
Currently, the new online application, Performance.gov, includes a measure of the extent to which agencies have transitioned to the lower-cost and more secure telecommunications contract Networx, OMB spokeswoman Meg Reilly said. In October, the White House will add information on every agency's plan to reduce the number of data centers it maintains. The site currently is restricted to federal personnel only.
"We will post each agency's target number of data centers, and then update the site annually to show progress," she added. In the future, the site might include metrics on the adoption of cloud computing, which is a way of accessing IT equipment and software remotely through a third-party online provider instead of maintaining systems in-house.
The president issued a letter reminding senior executives in the federal government that they are accountable to the public. It informed them the White House will begin publicly monitoring their progress in meeting key goals, which were detailed in an attachment written by Jeffrey Zients, federal chief performance officer. The goals include closing the IT gap between the public sector and the private sector, reforming contracting, and encouraging accountability by disclosing data on agency productivity. The White House intends to expand Performance.gov and make it public this fall to track agencies' work on these goals, Zients wrote.
OMB already is overhauling the IT acquisition process by freezing projects that are not performing as expected and meeting with agency CIOs to pare back projects deemed too ambitious to complete in a timely fashion.
Tuesday's memo revealed that the meetings have prompted the administration to suspend development of a $64.5 million export control system at the Commerce Department that it decided was duplicative. In two months, OMB will issue formal guidelines on IT procurement that will change the way systems are bought from the moment they are conceived through their termination. The framework will demand higher standards for project management practices and personnel, additional mechanisms for holding managers accountable for project results, and the elimination of outdated and cumbersome rules.