The Government Accountability Office has called on eight federal departments and their component agencies to organize their policies and review and approval processes for their information technology budgets. The GAO said in a report published Tuesday that despite meeting the Office of Management and Budget’s requirements for establishing a method for implementing the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, the departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, Justice and Treasury lack practices for ensuring that their chief information officers are properly managing and reporting their IT budgets.
The aforementioned agencies have no clear way of verifying if their CIOs checked their IT portfolio, which should include appropriate estimates of all IT resources included in their budget request.
The four organizations also did not state in their FITARA implementation and delegation plans how they would execute OMB’s requirements.
The GAO noted that the absence of a standard approach for addressing IT budgeting requirements could create inconsistent practices for facilitating the oversight of CIOs on IT budgets.
The agency advised the four departments to demonstrate their implementation of OMB requirements and develop ways of ensuring that their IT budgets are informed by reliable cost information.
Other agencies that the GAO mentioned in its report include the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, FBI, Internal Revenue Service and National Nuclear Security Administration.
