Agency managers with visions of multi-billion-dollar information technology projects dancing in their heads need to wake up, Clinton administration officials said Tuesday. Big-bang IT initiatives tend to explode, they argued, so it's much better for agencies to try smaller-scale innovations in phases.
Office of Management and Budget Director Franklin Raines, new IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti, and other federal IT bigwigs sounded the same theme to an audience of managers and executives on the first day of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's annual Virtual Government conference in College Park, Md.: step-by-step IT systems development is in, one-giant-push systems modernization is out.
"We aren't smart enough to manage multi-billion-dollar, 'Turn it on the last day and see if it works' projects," Raines said. "I think it's pretty clear throughout OMB that we're against those."
Raines urged agencies to plan IT initiatives in phases, with regular milestones at which performance can be measured and projects evaluated. He said the time period from a project's conception to getting some use out of it should be six to nine months. Otherwise, return on investment will probably shrink and the technology may become outdated, Raines said.
IRS' Rossotti seconded Raines' assessment, noting that the latest effort at IRS systems modernization will occur in numerous phases. He said IRS systems are too complex to attack modernization at full speed.
"We have a really big technology challenge at the IRS," Rossotti said. "There's no way we're going to be able to replace this in a few major pieces."
Last week, IRS chief information officer Arthur Gross resigned, reportedly over differences with Rossotti on how quickly to move forward with systems modernization. Both Rossotti and Gross have downplayed concerns that their differences led to Gross' departure.
Joseph Thompson, undersecretary for benefits at the Veterans Benefits Administration, said the Department of Veterans Affairs has learned firsthand that IT systems must be developed in manageable chunks.
"Technology has just wrapped us in knots at VA," Thompson said. "We went on the big bang theory." An IT modernization program set to be completed between 1985 and 1992 never materialized. VA's IT foul-ups have cost the agency credibility and brought on budget cuts from which the department is still recovering, Thompson said.
Congress has blasted agencies in recent years for spending billions of dollars on systems upgrades that failed to deliver what agencies originally promised. In addition to the IRS, the National Weather Service, the Agency for International Development, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Health Care Financing Administration have had to explain to Congress what happened when large-scale systems modernizations failed.
Officials at the conference also focused on the importance of solving the year 2000 problem. Raines, who late last year moved up the deadline for agencies to complete year 2000 conversion of their systems from November 1999 to March 1999, said agencies are most likely underestimating the price tag of ensuring their computers operate on Jan. 1, 2000. Agencies are now estimating they will spend $1 billion in 1999 on year 2000 fixes.
"We have instructed the agencies to make as their number one priority in their IT budgets the year 2000 problem," Raines said. "It can only be solved agency by agency, system by system."
Rossotti said the IRS must complete much of its year 2000 conversions by the end of 1998, in time for the 1999 tax filing season. He said there may be some glitches, but he downplayed the possibility of a major computer catastrophe.
"I don't think we're going to have a meltdown," Rossotti said.
OMB is due to release a quarterly report on the federal government's year 2000 progress on Friday.
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