Not enough has been done to align the federal budget process with the technology cycle, said Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra April 12.

"In terms of making sure we're working with Congress on budget flexibilities, that's an area--given that Congress has been very focused on the 2011 budget and not the '12--we haven't made as much progress as I would have liked on moving forward in that direction," said Kundra during a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's federal financial management, government information, federal services and international security subcommittee.

The first round of deadlines on the Office of Management and Budget's 25-point plan to reform federal IT (.pdf) arrive in just two months and include two action items for more agile IT budgeting. Point 17 of the plan calls on OMB and federal agencies to work with Congress to create IT budget models that align with modular development. Point 20 of the plan calls on OMB and federal agencies to work with Congress to consolidate commodity IT spending under agency CIOs. 

Another 12 points are moving as planned toward a June deadline, said Kundra, who also said that OMB-led efforts have saved $3 billion in IT costs over the last 26 months by re-focusing runaway IT programs, consolidating infrastructure and investing in light technologies.

Agencies have identified over 100 data centers that can be shut down this calendar year, said Kundra. "We want to move forward very, very aggressively to make sure that assets that are not being utilized are not wasting tax-payer money on them," he added. OMB's data center consolidation effort aims to shutter 800 facilities by 2015.

Kundra said all agencies have submitted three systems that will move to the cloud, about 75 in all, and agencies are now looking at security requirements and procurement strategies to make the transition. The OMB cloud first mandate requires every agency to have one cloud solution in place by December 2011 and up to three cloud-based programs by June 2012.

The creation of a program-manager track for IT is also on pace, said Kundra. On March 29 the Office of Personnel Management proposed that "information technology program manager" become an official federal title, updating that IT Management 2210 series federal job category.

"No matter how effective our programs and technologies are, the success rests on effective program managers," Kundra said the success of federal IT "rests on effective program managers" and sometimes these programs have been managed by people "who lack training."

Noting the importance of leadership for a plan of this scale, Sen. Scott Brown, (R-Mass.) asked: "Mr. Kundra, what's your plan? Do you plan on staying on as Federal CIO until the plan is seen through?"

Kundra said the "plan is engineered so that it's not dependent on any single individual. Because at the end of the day--as you correctly point out--there's 300-plus investments. Every CIO of every major department needs to be as focused on execution as we are within the White House."

For more:
- watch a video of the hearing
- see OMB's 25-point plan to reform federal IT (.pdf)

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