The House Subcommittee on Information Technology sought to untangle the knotty problems of IT acquisition in a March 28 hearing, finding plenty of places to start.

Budget estimates claim that of the $80 billion spent annually on federal IT, 75 percent of it goes to maintaining current legacy systems, possibly hampering cybersecurity efforts and putting the government behind the curve on updating its tech.

While the federal government strives to upgrade dated legacy systems, Subcommittee Chair Will Hurd, R-Texas, said the lengthy process of procuring new tech has left agencies hamstrung and industry frustrated.

"Companies of any size who may initially have an idea or product of use to the federal government get discouraged trying to navigate the red tape and direct their energies elsewhere. Startups often don't even try — they can't afford the lawyers," he said.

"Reforming our acquisition system so the federal government can properly adopt a 'buy, not build approach' will result in cost-savings, technological advancement and improved security for our federal systems."

In an effort to not only diagnose what ails IT acquisition but to reform it, public sector experts and industry stakeholders offered three tips the federal government can pursue.

Inventory what you've got

One way for agencies to better manage their IT acquisition is to know what they already have, said Trey Hodgkins, senior vice president of the Information Technology Alliance for Public Sector.   

"Such an action serves several purposes: Exposing exactly what the federal government owns and what is it doing with it, determining where vulnerabilities may exist to prioritize investments in cyber protections and deciding what needs modernization and how best to achieve it," he said.

Part of the inventory problem, Hodgkins said, is how agencies approach the cataloging it and the perimeters defining that inventory.

"The challenge you have is that different agencies treat those requirements in different ways," he said. "We saw this with data center consolidation. The first rollout defined a data center as X, Y and Z. Agencies worked to make sure their data center didn't fit in that metric.

"I think we have to come up with incentives for agencies to expose this information and then act effectively around what agencies need to be doing with the directions and metrics that Congress and OMB are setting."

Get more accountability

Despite the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act — or FITARA — giving agency chief information officers authority over IT projects, David Powner, director of IT management issues at the Government Accountability Office, said that out of 24 CIOs only eight felt that they had the authority to cancel bad IT projects.

Powner said that agencies need to do more to empower CIOs; develop stronger policies for incremental project development; and have the Office of Management and Budget put more emphasis of FITARA self-assessments, TechStat reviews and reviewing top IT government project status.

Pass the MGT

One thing the hearing’s witnesses said would streamline the acquisition process would be to pass the Modernizing Government Technology Act.

The MGT Act, sponsored by Hurd, would set up funding structures for agencies to devote toward IT modernization projects. The bill debuted last September with bipartisan support, but was not taken up for a vote by a lame duck Congress.

Hurd is said to be working on reintroducing the bill this year, but asked former IRS and Department of Homeland Security CIO Richard Spires what challenges CIOs may still face even after it would become law.

"This whole model that says we should be able to realize savings through efficiencies and reinvest in modernization, I think you are going to have a lot of issues with that," Spires said. "That would include up to Congress and appropriations committees, because of the way budgeting structure works."

But Spires said that the bill’s use of working capital funds does provide agencies with more flexibility to develop IT projects by giving them the ability to deprogram other funds and assert them toward IT.

"As long as the appropriations committees up here can work with the agencies to make sure that model works well, that’s great," he said.

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