The Government Accountability Office has released a report profiling 16 ongoing IT acquisition programs deemed critical to the mission of the agencies implementing them.
Need for IT Acquisition Oversight
The report was prepared in response to a request by Congress and as part of a broader effort to ensure the implementation of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, which seeks to enhance agency investments in IT by promoting better planning and management, according to the report, which GAO issued on Tuesday.
Federal IT acquisitions have been seen to cost more than initially projected and take longer to implement while producing systems that fail to perform, causing the GAO to place IT acquisition and management under its High Risk List and resulting in the need for greater monitoring and oversight.
IT Acquisition Challenges & Risks
The 16 acquisition efforts profiled in the report were selected based on a survey of the 24 Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990-covered agencies, which were asked to identify their top three ongoing mission-critical IT acquisitions. The profiled acquisitions include the Department of Defense’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability program, the Department of Veterans Affairs’ electronic health record modernization program, the Department of State’s Consular Systems Modernization program and the Small Business Administration’s MySBA Platform program.
Of the 16 programs, seven were found to be facing significant cybersecurity and information privacy risks, which escalate over time as existing infrastructure age and cyber threats become more complex. Ten were also deemed to potentially jeopardize the agency’s mission should the acquisition not push through.
In total, the 16 programs are projected to cost at least $51.7 billion.
