Calling information technology central to the Obama administration governance efforts, Jeffrey Zients, acting director and deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, unveiled Nov. 19 a strategy to change the way federal agencies annually buy nearly $80 billion worth of IT.

Namely, agencies should now adopt cloud-based solutions "whenever a secure, reliable, cost-effective cloud option exists," Zients said while speaking at a Northern Virginia Technology Council breakfast in McLean, Va. He also made a case for more flexible acquisition at the point of deployment, greater information sharing between agencies and industry, and ramping up acquisition and project management staff. In addition, agency budgets and acquisitions should better align with the rapid technology cycle, Zients said. Pilot projects are currently underway in this area, he added.

"Fixing IT is central to everything we are trying to do. IT is our top priority," Zients added.

OMB plans to free up funds for agencies to hire more acquisition professionals, he said. As for better program management, Zients said it can be achieved through better hiring and training, and better accountability and management. Agencies should create a career track for IT program managers and OMB will only sign off on IT projects with a clear, dedicated IT program manager.

In addition, Zients said agencies should reconstitute their investment review boards along the TechStat model.

The new strategy also aims to increase engagement with the IT community. Daniel Gordon, OMB's administrator for federal procurement policy will lead a "myth busters" campaign on the topic of procurement to promote broader industry collaboration.

"Government IT needs to be more agile and responsive to evolving technologies, and more accountable and focused on delivering outcomes," said Zients. "What we need to do to make this happen isn't the stuff of controversial frameworks, or radical new approaches."

The success of such IT restructuring, however, may be determined more by Congress than OMB management or agency cooperation, especially Zient's technology and budget-alignment effort. Congress typically tightly holds onto its powers tied to appropriations and previous OMB efforts under past administrations to get Congress to grant flexibility have been unsuccessful.

What's more, clear guidance around cloud computing adoption is still outstanding from the National Institutes for Standards and Technology. While NIST has under development a roadmap for cloud adoption, governmentwide guidance for matter such as data recovery, security and service level agreements with private cloud providers currently remains unrealized.

On Dec. 9, Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra will further explain the initiative in a public meeting, said Zients.

For more:
- see the whitehouse.gov blog post
- listen to audio of the OMB announcement

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