The federal government must take critical action to address issues with its acquisition and management of IT, which has been on the Government Accountability Office‘s High Risk List since 2015 due to years of cost increases, protracted implementations or complete failure.
IT Acquisition & Management Challenges
GAO said in a report released Thursday that it has classified the government’s IT acquisition and management issues into three challenges: first, the need to strengthen oversight and management of IT portfolios; second, the implementation of mature IT acquisition and development practices; and third, building federal IT capacity and capabilities.
IT Portfolio Oversight
To address these challenges, a total of nine actions were proposed. For the first challenge, it was proposed that the effectiveness of IT leaders, including chief information officers and chief artificial intelligence officers, be improved. IT system and operation management at the agency level should also be enhanced while IT investment monitoring should be improved and planning for IT acquisitions should be strengthened.
Mature IT Acquisition Practices
For the second challenge, the implementation of leading IT acquisition and development practices should be improved. Also, the planning and management of cloud services, supply chains and telecommunication services should be strengthened, according to GAO.
Building Up IT Capabilities
For the third challenge, the agency said workforce management issues should be addressed, federal customer experience should be improved for digital services and emerging technologies should be effectively managed.
