Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra told a House panel last week the Office of Management and Budget wants to expand the accountability reviews for IT projects known as TechStats.
But to do that, the programs need some cash.
All told, Kundra said, the TechStat expansion would require about $60 million in congressional appropriations, according to FierceGovernmentIT.
With the added influx of funding, TechStat sessions would be able to focus on more than only over-budget or behind-schedule federal IT projects, but on all projects across the board, with a focus on reducing duplicated programs and projects, he added.
So far, about 58 TechStat sessions have been held, saving the government about $3 billion by shuttering or restructuring IT projects, Government Technology reported.
A lot of work goes into TechStat sessions: combing through Government Accountability Office reports; sifting through data and comments on the IT Dashboard, which tracks federal IT investments; and interviewing agency-level CIOs about the projects.
However, the appropriated funds will mostly be used to ensure the solutions the TechStat sessions set out are being implemented, Kundra said, according to Gov Tech.
“What’s difficult, as you look at these TechStat sessions, is not the act of just conducting the TechStat sessions,” Kundra said. “It’s actually the follow-through and the follow up, which takes countless hours and resources to make sure that if Agency A has committed to making sure that they’re going live in one month, that we come back a month from then and say, ‘You said you would go live, what happened?'” he explained.
