Page 9 - FCW, July 2017
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32 code repos are shared on NSA’s recently launched public GitHub account
OMB cracks down on ‘low-value’ compliance
CSRA wins
$500M milCloud
2.0 contract
The Defense Information Systems Agency is moving forward with mil- Cloud 2.0 with the award of a maxi- mum $500 million Phase 1 contract to CSRA. The indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract began its three-year base period on June 9, and the contract includes five additional option years.
Unlike milCloud 1.0, which was launched in March 2014 as a govern- ment-run cloud, the latest iteration will be run by the contractor in a Defense Department data center. The contractor will support the transition of user data, and the government will retain owner- ship of that data and the applications hosted in the new commercial cloud.
Even though DOD is in the process of moving to Windows 10 as its sole oper- ating system, the milCloud 2.0 specifica- tions state that the infrastructure must support a range of operating systems.
— Sean D. Carberry
The Trump administration has months left before it can show progress on plans to reorganize the federal gov- ernment, but the Office of Manage- ment and Budget hopes to demon- strate through one small step that it is serious about comprehensive reform.
OMB announced in June that it was rescinding 50 guidance and pol- icy documents deemed “redundant, obsolete or unnecessary” and modify- ing nine more. Those efforts will save potentially tens of thousands of staff hours because agencies will no longer have to file compliance reports and data on a range of topics.
Specifically, OMB is rescinding seven policy memos that require con- tinuity plans and readiness reporting for the Y2K bug, which threatened computer systems with outages when the date switched from 1999 to 2000.
“Realistically, are people still reporting on these things?” asked Linda Springer, a senior adviser at OMB, during a press briefing. “No. But
there is still a requirement out there.” Also targeted for elimination are some of the reporting requirements under the E-Government Act of 2002. But because they are enshrined in
law, new legislation is required. “The E-Gov Act needs to be reau- thorized,” Springer said. “We’ve had initial discussions with staff on the Hill about this. I expect there will be a successor to it” that eliminates out-
dated reporting requirements. Career IT leaders had already started to eliminate some out-of-date requirements during the last days of
the Obama administration.
“There’s no way a political appoin-
tee like myself...is going to know the levels of duplication that exist,” OMB Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters. “It’s going to fall to those career staff. And let’s face it, they’re as frustrated by bad government as any political appointee from either party.”
— Adam Mazmanian
FITARA progress stalls on scorecard 4.0
After steady improvement on previous scorecards, agencies’ progress on imple- menting the Federal Information Tech- nology Acquisition Reform Act stalled on the fourth round. For the first time, more agencies’ grades declined than improved, while 15 remained neutral.
Only four agencies improved, includ- ing the U.S. Agency for International Development. USAID recorded the big- gest jump in the history of the score- card, leaping from a D-plus to an A-plus. It was also the first to earn an A. The departments of Housing and Urban Development, State and Transporta- tion each improved by a full letter grade.
Grades for five agencies — the departments of Defense, Interior and Labor; the Office of Personnel Manage-
ment; and the Social Security Adminis- tration — declined by a full letter.
During a congressional hearing in June, Dave Powner, director of IT management issues at the Govern- ment Accountability Office, attribut- ed the general lack of improvement, “in part, to the transitioning adminis- trations and also to the expansion of scoring methodology.”
Of the 24 agencies reviewed, eight have acting CIOs. Although those agencies did not fare notably worse on the scorecard, Powner said the lack of permanent CIOs across govern- ment is hindering agencies’ ability to implement FITARA.
Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) expressed frustration that many agencies lack a
clear chain of command and that many CIOs still do not report directly to the agency head.
DOD dropped from a D-plus to an F-plus. Its failing grade for transparency and risk management drew the brunt of lawmakers’ ire.
Powner said the failing transparency grade was due to DOD’s reclassification of $15 billion worth of IT spending as national security systems, a category exempt from FITARA review.
“To have $15 billion magically appear under that umbrella doesn’t seem right,” he said. “DOD is the last organization in the world that should be exempt from FITARA. If any organization needs a pri- vate sector-type CIO, it’s DOD.”
— Chase Gunter
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