The Government Accountability Office released a report on Thursday stating that the General Services Administration and Office of Management and Budget need to develop a plan for recovering costs for the Technology Modernization Fund.
The fund covers modernization efforts for legacy information technology systems and requires agencies to provide repayments within five years. According to GAO, the fund earmarked $89 million to seven projects as of August but the projects were unable to implement best practices for cost-estimating.
GSA covered $1.2 million in expenses for the projects but collected only around 3 percent of the expenses. The agency will not fully recover expenses until at least fiscal year 2025, according to the report.
The watchdog noted that agencies are “at risk of continuing to provide unreliable cost information in their proposals†if GSA and OMB do not clarify requirements for cost-estimating as part of the modernization program.
