Page 11 - FCW, October 2017

$7M
IT, cyber figure in
State Department reorg
is the value of the sole-source contract the IRS awarded to Equifax one week after that firm’s data breach was disclosed
CRITICAL READ
WHAT: “Autonomous Vehicles for the Postal Service,” a report by the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General.
WHY: USPS, which employs hundreds of thousands of drivers, suffered 30,000 road accidents in 2016 and loses an average of 12 drivers per year to traffic fatalities. According to the OIG’s report, driverless vehicles could significantly reduce USPS’ accident rate.
Possible scenarios include continuing to have people deliv- er mail to homes and businesses while driverless vehicles serve as a courier service to pick up mail from the post office as postal workers make their rounds.
Another approach would remove people from the equation altogether by using the vehicles as mobile package lockers that “would come to the customer when convenient, allowing 24/7, on-demand delivery,” the report states. In addition, fully autonomous trucks could transport mail across the country.
Ultimately, the report recom- mends a deliberate though gradual transition to the new technology where it makes strategic sense.
VERBATIM: “Despite the fac- tors still hindering \[autono- mous vehicle\] availability,
it seems clear that this is where the future of trans- portation is headed.The pace of innovation suggests that we can expect highly autonomous vehicles to be available within 10 years.”
FULL REPORT:
is.gd/FCW_USPS
Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan told a House committee that the State Department “urgently needs to integrate IT systems and cybersecurity platforms” and update its aging legacy IT infrastructure. He also noted that “a decentralized risk management system hinders fast, forceful incident responses.”
“By modernizing, we’ll save money in the long run and facilitate better decision-making in the future,” Sullivan said during a September hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
He added that a move to a cloud- based platform will happen in the coming months and said State’s reform plan, which has been submitted to the Office of Management and Budget, takes into account feedback from 35,000 employees.
The reorganization comes in the context of a proposed 32 percent reduction in spending for the department
in the Trump administration’s budget proposal. Although House and Senate appropriators have not included such drastic cuts in their funding bills, Sullivan said he believed the department could fulfill its mission at the White House’s requested level. However, one area that might require more spending is technology.
“Where we need more resources to do our jobs more effectively we will seek them,” Sullivan told the committee. “IT is one area where I predict we will need assistance in the future.”
Rep. Francis Rooney (R-Fla.), who served as the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican during the George W. Bush administration, welcomed the news.
“I’m glad to hear you’re upgrading IT,” he said. “When I was serving in Rome, we had Windows minus-1.”
— Adam Mazmanian
DHS moves forward on financial system amid questions from Congress
Within days of a congressional hearing that raised concerns about delays and overspending on the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to modern- ize its financial management system, the agency issued a near-final request for proposals for that system.
The solicitation released on Sept. 28 is 95 percent complete, according to contracting documents obtained by FCW. Comments on the draft were due by Oct. 2, and the agency plans to make an award by Oct. 31.
The latest solicitation represents the fourth time the agency has tried to upgrade its financial management system. An effort to migrate to a shared service at the Interior Depart-
ment’s Interior Business Center was abandoned earlier this year because of missed deadlines and cost overruns.
“DHS is now rushing to implement a new strategy, which will likely put tax- payer dollars at more risk \[of\] waste,” said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Com- mittee’s Oversight and Management Efficiency Subcommittee, during a Sept. 26 hearing. “We are at a critical moment; DHS must fully engage with the private sector to help salvage this disaster. Leveraging industry’s talents is what should have been done in the first place and is the only possible way DHS might right this ship.”
— Mark Rockwell
October 2017
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