House Dems shutter IT panel
The IT Subcommittee of the Oversight and Reform committee is being folded into Government Operations under Rep. Gerry Connolly.
The House panel devoted to information technology oversight is being rolled up into a larger subcommittee, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) confirmed to FCW.
IT oversight will now be handled by the Government Operations subcommittee of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
"Marrying the two subcommittees was done in recognition of the fact that so much of the federal government’s operations are reliant upon information technology," Connolly told FCW in an emailed statement. "Federal IT is helping us deliver some of the most important functions and services our government provides to the public. Whether it is the FITARA Scorecard or FedRAMP reform, our subcommittee will continue to drive modernization in the federal government."
Connolly first announced the news in an interview with the public affairs program Government Matters. In that interview, Connolly said the subcommittee is "going to do a lot of work on modernizing how the federal government deals with information technology and the procurement portfolio."
The move isn't surprising because IT oversight is one of Connolly's top issues, and his Northern Virginia district is home to thousands of federal employees and contractors. Connolly was a top Democratic sponsor of bipartisan IT legislation in recent years, including FITARA and the Modernizing Government Technology Act.
The IT Subcommittee was revived in 2015 by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) during his time as chairman of the Oversight panel. The subcommittee was a showcase for rising star Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), a former CIA officer in a competitive district who studied computer science in college and worked in the private sector as a cybersecurity vendor.