Maybe a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but when agencies call information technology projects something else, they limit the ability of the Office of Management and Budget to oversee spending and identify duplicative systems, says the Government Accountability Office.

In a report dated Sept. 29--not posted online until Oct. 26--GAO auditors say misclassification occurs at two levels.

First, agencies have differing definitions of what constitutes "IT" in the first place. Some agencies include IT research and development projects in the reporting about major and non-major IT projects (exhibits 300s and 53s, respectively) sent to OMB every year as part of the federal budget process. Others do not. Auditors found the same situation with space systems, stating that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, hasn't reported at least $676 million in IT-related development for two earth observation satellite systems.

Even if it's in space, instruments, computers and transponders whose purpose is to acquire, manage and transmit data are IT, the report says--even though NOAA and NASA don't report them as such to OMB.

The second level occurs within the umbrella of reported IT spending itself. OMB tells agencies to classify spending according to one category, in order to be able to look for duplicative systems. But, IT investments can fit in more than once category, the report notes and the classification itself might be overly vague.

One agency seeking to develop a wildfire management system, for example, would probably fail to see that the Interior Department has already invested in one, considering Interior classifies its system as an "information management and technology" system, rather than a "disaster preparedness" system.

OMB officials told auditors that agencies can always provide free text descriptions of their systems, but reading through those descriptions would be labor-intensive, the report adds. They also disagreed with GAO recommendations that they clarify guidance on whether agencies should include research and development and space systems in their annual IT reporting, stating that they want to give agencies some flexibility in what to report on.

Officials also took exception to GAO's recommendation that OMB start specifying a bit more clearly that its annual figure of "federal IT investments" fails to include spending within the intelligence community and legislative or judicial branches. A FAQ section of the IT Dashboard, OMB officials said, clearly stipulates which agencies are included in that figure. GAO stands by its recommendation, since "OMB frequently refers to 'the federal government's $80 billion annual investment in IT' without clarifying that this $80 billion investment does not represent the entire federal government."

Efforts to reduce duplication across the government are mixed, the report also says. OMB's TechStat reviews  examined "only a small fraction of the over 7,000 investments that were identified by agencies" during fiscal 2011, according to the report.

The data center consolidation effort has been based on incomplete data center inventories and consolidation plans, the report adds.

An earlier administration plan to consolidate systems across federal agencies via the "lines of business" initiative has resulted in some cost avoidances, but only in three of the lines; only two of those provided specific cost avoidance amounts, the report says. Specifically, the geospatial and information systems security LOBs results in savings of about $9 million and $7.6 million, respectively.

For more:
- download the report, GAO-11-826 (.pdf)

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