Page 23 - FCW, March/April 2018

REP. WILL HURD:
Making
modernization
possible
BY DEREK B. JOHNSON
The rst time Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) realized the depth of the federal govern- ment’s IT problems was shortly after he arrived on Capitol Hill in 2015. He was being briefed by staffers from the House Oversight and Government Reform Com- mittee’s IT Subcommittee in advance of a hearing on the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014.
New to Congress, Hurd asked for background on what the bill did. They told him that the government needed standards for collecting information about its online payments and expenditures.
Hurd, a computer science major who had served as a senior adviser to cyberse- curity rm FusionX before being elected to Congress, was stunned. There wasn’t already a standard in place to collect that kind of data?
“That’s 101,” Hurd said. “How do you know how much you’re spending or how much it costs? That was the rst time I was like, ‘What the hell?’”
The episode served as a wake-up call and helped kick off a two-year legisla- tive odyssey for Hurd that ended with the passage of the Modernizing Govern- ment Technology Act in December 2017. The law gives CIOs the ability to create working capital funds at their agencies to address long-standing IT modern- ization needs not covered by normal appropriations. It also authorized a $500 million Technology Modernization Fund to be managed by the General Services Administration, with agencies submitting proposals and competing for funding.
In less than three years on the job, Hurd has carved out a role in Con-
gress as a leading voice on government technology issues and someone who
is willing to work across party lines. In a town de ned by its ability to make virtually any issue partisan or ideologi- cal, the MGT Act drew broad bipartisan support — from both the Obama and Trump administrations, Republican leaders and tech-minded Democratic members of Congress such as Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) and Ted Lieu (D-Calif.).
Hurd’s passion for the subject is real. He often jokes that when he returns home to his district near San Antonio, there are never any activists holding up signs angrily demanding IT procurement reform.
It was his work conducting oversight of the Federal IT Acquisition Reform
Act that opened his eyes to the extent to which federal CIOs still lacked visibil-
ity into and control over their own IT budgets. In Hurd’s view, he couldn’t hold agency CIOs accountable if they didn’t have the tools they needed to do their job. That toolkit starts with budgetary exibility and a system that doesn’t pun- ish agencies when they implement more ef cient IT. Under the MGT Act, when an agency upgrades its technology infra- structure and saves money, those savings can be used to fund future projects.
“That’s why I think the \\\[law\\\] is so important, to give the CIO the abil-
ity to modernize and not be negatively impacted for modernizing,” Hurd said. “If you save money \\\[in government\\\], money gets taken away oftentimes. Therefore, you don’t do things that will ultimately save you money.” n
March/April 2018 FCW.COM 19
ROBERT SEVERI