The Government Accountability Office has called on federal agencies to allow chief information officers to assess and approve information technology contracts in an effort to increase CIOs’ oversight of agencies’ planned IT acquisitions.GAO said in a report published Wednesday 14 of the 22 assessed agencies failed to involve CIOs in the review and approval of IT procurement plans and strategies in compliance with the Office of Management and Budget’s implementation guidance for the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act.
GAO randomly selected 96 IT contracts awarded by 10 federal agencies in fiscal 2016 and found that only 11 of them were assessed and cleared by CIOs and that the remaining unevaluated contracts were worth approximately $23.8 billion.
Of the 22 assessed agencies, 14 of them failed to comply with OMB’s guidance to involve acquisition offices to help determine IT procurements that should undergo CIO reviews, according to the report.
The report also found that most of the 22 agencies that GAO assessed were not able to identify all of their IT procurement contracts.
GAO discovered approximately $4.5 billion worth of fiscal 2016 IT-related contracts in addition to $14.7 billion in IT contract obligations identified by selected agencies, according to the report.
