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Management
hopeful to be able to have congressio- nal buy-in to try and get some of this accomplished.”
The OMB guidance stresses IT, shared services, governmentwide acqui- sition contracts and contractor-provid- ed as-a-service offerings as important tools agencies should consider in their restructuring plans.
Terry Gerton, president of the Nation- al Academy of Public Administration, expressed optimism about much of the guidance but cautioned that migrations to shared services require thoughtful management.
“If you’re not careful, those shared- services organizations get separated from the mission part of the organiza- tion,” she said, adding that without a strong provider/customer relationship, program offices are liable to rebuild those shared functions on their own.
A bigger issue is that program effi- ciencies “are not going to get you tril- lions of dollars in savings,” Gerton added.
Controlling spending
In developing plans to become more efficient, the White House said agencies
should consider ways to better use tech- nology and intra-agency and interagency shared services and centers of expertise. The guidance also recommends using shared IT infrastructure and external service providers, including providers on best-in-class contracts as part of the gov- ernment’s category management effort.
Furthermore, agencies should consid- er GWACs and federal supply schedules for common goods and services to save money, avoid wasteful and redundant contracting actions, and free the acqui- sition staff to accelerate procurements for high-priority mission-centric work.
Joanne Woytek, program manager for NASA’s Solutions for Enterprise- Wide Procurement contract vehicle, told FCW that “SEWP does not see this so much as a sea change as a continuation of a trend we have been focused on, especially over the past two years.” She said SEWP officials have been working with agency CIOs and chief acquisition officers for some time rather than “being a passive framework for acquisitions.”
“As noted in the memo, contract vehi- cles such as SEWP can provide agencies with an important tool in their acqui- sition planning to effectively deal with
increased demand with fewer resourc- es,” Woytek added.
Additionally, the guidance said agen- cies should control spending by better managing demand and consumption, consolidating IT infrastructure require- ments, buying standard configurations for common requirements, participating in volume buying events and applying best commercial buying practices.
Many of the recommendations in the OMB guidance were fostered dur- ing the Obama administration through the General Services Administration’s category management efforts, including the category hallways.
GSA, which would be a focal point for common acquisition and strategic purchasing efforts under the guidance, declined immediate comment.
The impact on feds
Unions and other organizations that represent federal employees and man- agers greeted the guidance with a mix of optimism and trepidation.
“This memorandum is a huge oppor- tunity for our country,” said Bill Valdez, president of the Senior Executives Asso- ciation. “It will cause us all to ask the
Trump talks IT modernization
The search for funding to modernize aging federal IT systems was a top priority last year, but proposals for both centralized and agency-specific funds failed to clear Congress. Now, however, President DonaldTrump has said he’s in favor of such an investment.
At an April 11 meeting of the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum,Trump stressed the need to replace aging federal IT systems and casually suggested spending $10 billion on modernization.
“We have a computer system in this country that’s 40 years old,”Trump said. “We’re like easy targets [for hackers].... We’re going to have a massive program to modernize our equipment — ideally get brand-new equipment.”
He said the cost of maintaining legacy systems “is so high that it’s not even a believable number,” and the government spends $39 billion to $89 billion a year “for keeping our computers updated and running.”
“I think we can buy a whole new system for less May 2017 FCW.COM
money than that,” Trump added. “I mean, I hope so. We’ll give you $10 billion right now. Modernize it.”
The IT Dashboard puts agency IT spending at $81.6 billion for fiscal 2017, but a Deltek analysis pegged the total at just under $100 billion.The Obama administration had sought $3 billion for a governmentwide revolving fund to be used for modernizing high-priority systems, and the Modernizing GovernmentTechnology (MGT)
Act — which passed the House last year but stalled in the Senate — was given a five-year price tag of $9 billion by the Congressional Budget Office. Neither bill would have covered all aging federal systems.
Mulvaney has not said whether modernization funding will be part of the administration’s full budget
for fiscal 2018. Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) has said he intends to reintroduce the MGT Act this year, adding that appropriators in the House and Senate appear to support the measure.
—Troy K. Schneider


































































































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