Page 34 - FCW, June/July 2021

IT Modernization
Developing connections between TMF and larger IT investment programs will yield sustained positive outcomes for the government.
The idea:
Developing connections between TMF and larger IT investment programs will yield sustained positive outcomes for the government.
The four priority areas above are dis- tinct investment options as well as inter- connected technology domains. Accord- ingly, they suggest the need for agency proposals and TMF Board reviews that are simultaneously specific to each area and common across all four. For exam- ple, modernizing systems necessitates reviewing and improving the security posture of those assets, and the public that accesses digital services relies on secure and modernized applications for good performance. Cross-agency servic- es should embrace all those elements.
Similarly, ARP’s investments in TMF and related technology domains should be considered in terms of how these investments connect to current agency programs, platforms and applications. The federal government will likely spend close to $100 billion on tech- nology in 2021, if that total includes new ARP funds and potential addi- tional spending under the American
Jobs Plan and American Families Plan (should they be enacted). If TMF and other ARP investments are not viewed in this larger — i.e., more than 50-fold — spending context, they may be imple- mented as one-off projects that embrace innovation but do not scale to promote broader technology modernization.
In addition, effective TMF proj- ects should start with an assessment of business processes and a realign- ment of those processes to focus on user needs and expectations. Simply modernizing technology without also modernizing how users interact with services provided by that technology will not produce new systems that achieve TMF objectives for improved customer experience and increased customer satisfaction.
A strategy of linking the criteria and investment portfolio from TMF to drive improvements in related investments across the portfolio would involve sev- eral elements, including:
• Tying new investments to the agen- cy’s overall strategic and IT plans.
• Identifying a funding stream that connects TMF projects with the agen-
cy’s 2022 and 2023 budget planning and execution proposals.
• Connecting criteria for TMF and similar modernization funding streams to contract work that supports the over- all $100 billion in IT spending — and supports the $650 billion in spending on service contracts overall, a number also likely to increase this year — thereby accelerating impacts across this larger spending base.
• Encouraging cross-agency technol- ogy and shared-services initiatives to operate in a manner consistent with the selection criteria identified under TMF.
• Focusing specific investments on goals for business process improvement and customer satisfaction.
During the execution of a past tech- nology reform initiative, Project Quick- silver, OMB developed a strategy for how 24 cross-cutting e-government ini- tiatives could “pull forward” the rest of the IT portfolio (roughly $60 billion at that time) as part of the 2001 President’s Management Agenda. That framework was supported by the then-newly devel- oped Federal Enterprise Architecture and amplified through emerging shared- services lines of business that included financial management, human resourc- es, grants and later cybersecurity — all areas that continue as shared-services lines of business today.
A similar whole-of-government strat- egy can help OMB, GSA and agencies work separately and collectively to ensure that innovative projects funded under TMF and related technology lines in ARP will have a greater impact than what could be realized at the individual project level. Such a connection to the overall IT portfolio helped contribute to the success of the 2001 President’s Man- agement Agenda, elements of which still exist as the Benefits.gov, Grants.gov and Regulations.gov shared-services initia- tives, for example. Conversely, innova- tions that lack a connection to longer- term strategies and priorities have often failed to last beyond the tenure of the initial project period.
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