Page 18 - FCW, August 15, 2016

HOW IT WORKS
cy’s National Water Use Leadership Team. For the major water reports, information is stored in the Aggregate Water-Use Data System (AWUDS). USGS also maintains the Site-Specif- ic Water-Use Data System (SWUDS) for information on water withdrawal. Both rely on an Oracle database and
form part of the National Water Infor- mation System (NWIS).
“\[For SWUDS\], a move to a single central server is planned, as is a com- plete NWIS modernization, which will replace the outdated code with more modern code, and probably a rede- sign,” Barber said. “As with AWUDS,
the database has a long history with several architectural changes, although a larger share of the design and coding has been handled by USGS personnel.”
No state is perfect
As noted above, USGS relies almost
Understanding how FITARA grades are calculated BY AISHA CHOWDHRY
The grades most agencies have received for their efforts to implement the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act have not been good. To understand why, it’s important to under- stand the scoring process.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said the scorecards, which the Government Account- ability Office is compiling for 24 covered agencies on a quarterly basis, are “a bit of an evolutionary process.”
“We felt the categories being measured right now would have a demonstrable benefit on IT acquisitions and operations,” Connolly told FCW, but “GAO already has put agencies on notice that they are not accurately calculating or reporting their proj- ect risks, so that needs to improve.”
“Similarly, some agencies have said the scorecard is not quite capturing their specific situation, so there may be tweaks we need tomake,”headded.
For now, however, agencies are graded in four key areas: Data Center Consolidation, IT Portfolio Review Savings, Incremen-
tal Development and Risk Assessment Transparency.
Dave Powner, director of IT manage- ment issues at GAO, oversees a team of about 40 people who, in addition to their other oversight duties, share the four areas for FITARA scoring.
For Data Center Consolidation, some agencies report different numbers to GAO and the Office of Management and Budget, so grades are based on the percentage of planned savings that agencies report having achieved by consolidating data centers.
In the case of the General Services Administration, for example, officials report- ed $29 million in actual savings, which was roughly 60 percent of the planned savings of $49 million.That earned GSA a D.
For IT Portfolio Review Savings, an agency’s PortfolioStat savings are divided by the agency’s total IT budget for the previous three fiscal years.That ratio is then com- pared to the leading agency’s ratio.
When it comes to Incremental Devel- opment, GAO determines the percentage
of an agency’s IT projects that are linked with major investments that can deliver functionality every six months. For example, theTreasury Department reported 35 projects associated with12 major invest- ments.Twenty-two of those projects, or 63 percent, were delivering functionality every six months, giving DOT a D for Incremental Development.
GAO grades on a curve for Risk Assess- mentTransparency.The goal is for CIOs to
give an accurate assessment of their agen- cies’ risk postures, so the five agencies with the lowest share of IT rated “green” (low/ moderately low risk) on the IT Dashboard are given an A.The next five get a B and so on, with the final four agencies receiving an F.
Powner and Connolly stressed that enhancing agency CIOs’ authorities is the key to making progress on all four scores.
“I like to promote three pillars of manage- ment: mission, passion, metrics,” Connolly said. “First, you have to identify your mis- sion. In this case, it’s improved management of limited IT dollars.Then you need to instill a passion in the workforce for achieving that. With FITARA, we’re empowering CIOs to exercise new authorities to achieve savings and then allowing them to save some of those dollars for new IT investments. And finallywithmetrics,youmustbeableto verify that real progress is being made, and sofar,Ifeelitis.”n
“I like to promote three
pillars of management:
mission, passion, metrics.”
— REP. GERRY CONNOLLY
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