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Contractors should refuse tech projects with undefined goals, OMB official says
Federal agencies must become better information technology clients, and if they don't, private sector contractors should refuse to take their money, the Office of Management and Budget's management chief told a group of IT managers and industry officials Wednesday.
"If we haven't defined [an IT program] to the ultimate degree, then you need to just stop taking our money," Clay Johnson, OMB's deputy director for management, said during a conference in Washington on Internet-enabled government services. "We need to be really smart about how we spend out IT dollars."
Both government project managers and private contractors are responsible for failing to define goals for federal technology projects, Johnson said.
He cited the FBI's failure to upgrade its digital case-management system as an example of a program that was not well defined. The Virtual Case File system, contracted to Science Applications International Corp. for more than $170 million, was intended to help FBI agents improve the management of case records, but the project was scuttled after several setbacks.
"Too often we'll invest in systems ... and we haven't clearly defined what we want this system to do," Johnson said. "That kind of discipline didn't exist with Virtual Case File."
Technology spending is one of the select areas that has seen budget increases under the Bush administration, most recently to the tune of more than 7.1 percent, raising the government's total IT budget to $65.2 billion.
Johnson said there is $25 billion to $30 billion of government work that could be done by the private sector, and decisions must be made on who can most efficiently do that work.
COMMENTS
- So, contractors must only take contracts when the scope of work is completely defined. Yeah, right... I nominate this for Moronic Government Statement of the Year. Whatever happened to the concept of "partnering" between the Federal Government and its contractors? When did we lose that initiative? Is it part of the apparent cancellation of acquistion reform, spearheaded by know-nothings in Congress and in the OMB? When did the Federal Government change course so drastically? Was there a memo? I guess I must have missed it... GovExec.com reader Posted June 16, 2005 9:40 AM
- What's he smoking? It's easy to shift blame for IT project failures on contractrs - in some cases deserved, in many others not. Rather than shift the burden of overruns and delivery failures to contractors, OMB may want to spend some of the taxpayers money on educating federal managers on project management and requiremetns definition...two areas that would definitely increase the odds of on-time-and-budget delivery of projects. GovExec.com reader Posted June 7, 2005 9:28 AM
- Mr. Johnson should get real! Why wouldn't these companies take our money? The government needs to throw out managers who aren't competent enough to insure they hire and promote people who know how to define requirements for a project. Managers also need to quit pressuring their people to hurry up and get it bid, because we have the money now. That keeps folks from completing the necessary up front analysis. It may require a change in the way government funds projects. Upper management also needs to quit setting deadlines for completion before projects have been sized. Erich Darr Posted June 2, 2005 10:19 AM
