The federal government’s sweeping 25-point reform of federal IT management appears to be paying dividends.
That was the message at panel discussion of chief information officers at the General Services Administration’s Interagency Resources Management Conference this week.
At the meeting, federal CIO Vivek Kundra, a high-profile administration champion of the reform, said the Office of Management and Budget’s plans have already saved $3 billion in federal IT funds in a little more than 3 months.
“There were some concerns that maybe this was too ambitious,” said Woody Hall, the panel moderator and CIO of General Dynamics Information Technology, according to Nextgov. “But all of you have actually embraced this — these are real initiatives being implemented.”
But, while agency-level CIOs have been instrumental in adopting and implementing the provisions of the reform plan, including its heralded cloud-first initiative, challenges likely remain.
For example, there is not one-size-fits-all approach.
“Everyone is entering this continuum at a different place,†said Agriculture Department CIO Chris Smith, according to a report in Washington Technology.
Henry Sienkiewicz, CIO of the Defense Information Systems Agency, offered caution against too much pie-in-the-sky philosophizing.
“I’ve listened to lots and lots of briefings on great ideas,” he said but many of them were never completed, Nextgov reported.
Even so, talk of the success stories also circulated around the panel.
For example, Sienkiewicz touted DISA’s platform-as-a-service Rapid Access Computing Environment, “which is … really a wonderful success story,†he said.
