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89–681 PDF 2015

S. Hrg. 113–702 

IDENTIFYING CRITICAL FACTORS FOR SUCCESS 

IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITIONS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

MAY 8, 2014 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov/ 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 

( 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

MARK BEGICH, Alaska 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

GABRIELLE A. BATKIN. Staff Director 

JOHN P. KILVINGTON, Deputy Staff Director 

JONATHAN M. KRADEN, Senior Counsel 

KEITH B. ASHDOWN, Minority Staff Director 

KATHRYN M. EDELMAN, Minority Senior Investigator 

LAURA W. KILBRIDE, Chief Clerk 

LAUREN M. CORCORAN, Hearing Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Carper ................................................................................................. 1 

Senator Coburn ................................................................................................. 3 

Prepared statements: 

Senator Carper ................................................................................................. 45 

WITNESSES 

THURSDAY, MAY 8, 2014 

Hon. Daniel M. Tangherlini, Administrator, U.S. General Services Administration ................................................................................................................... 4 

Steven L. VanRoekel, U.S. Chief Information Officer, U.S. Office of Management and Budget .................................................................................................. 6 

David A. Powner, Director of Information Technology Management Issues, 

U.S. Government Accountability Office .............................................................. 8 

Daniel J. Chenok, Executive Vice Chair, Industry Advisory Council, American 

Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council .................................... 26 

Karen S. Evans, Partner, KE&T Partners, LLC ................................................... 28 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Chenok, Daniel J.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 26 

Prepared statement with attachment ............................................................. 79 

Evans, Karen S.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 28 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 99 

Powner, David A.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 8 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 59 

Tangherlini, Hon. Daniel M.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 4 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 47 

VanRoekel, Steven L.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 53 

APPENDIX 

Chart referenced by Senator Carper ...................................................................... 107 

Chart referenced by Senator Carper ...................................................................... 108 

The hearing referenced by Senator Coburn ........................................................... 109 

Responses for post-hearing questions for the Record from: 

Mr. Tangherlini ................................................................................................ 111 

Mr. VanRoekel .................................................................................................. 116 

Mr. Powner ........................................................................................................ 130 

(1) 

IDENTIFYING CRITICAL FACTORS FOR 

SUCCESS IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 

ACQUISITIONS 

THURSDAY, MAY 8, 2014 

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Thomas R. Carper, 

Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Carper and Coburn. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN CARPER 

Chairman CARPER. Good morning, everyone. The hearing will 

begin. 

Dr. Coburn, our witnesses, our guests, I want to start off by just 

thanking you for joining us today, for your testimonies and your 

willingness to respond to our questions. My thanks to Dr. Coburn 

and his staff, as well, for helping us to put this hearing together 

as part of our ongoing Committee effort to improve how Federal 

agencies acquire, implement, and manage information technology 

(IT). 

It is a topic near and dear to my heart. I know it is something 

that is near and dear to Senator Coburn’s heart, something he has 

worked on, I have worked on for a number of years as we took 

turns leading what was the former Federal Financial Management 

Subcommittee. During our time in the Senate, we have heard about 

and chaired hearings on a number of successful IT projects. I have 

also, unfortunately, worked with my colleagues to determine what 

went wrong with a number of failed projects. 

One example of a successful government IT project is the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which went into effect in 2007. 

The program addressed one of the main 9/11 Commission findings, 

and that is before September 11, 2001, people could show a border 

official one of hundreds of different kinds of documents in order to 

enter the United States at land borders and ports of entry (POE), 

making it difficult for officials to identify fraudulent documents. 

Since 2007, people trying to enter our land ports must present a 

Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-approved secure card 

that communicates with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) 

equipment to prove their citizenship. The project required that 

Customs and Border Protection modernize its ports of entry infra-
2 

structure and IT systems in order to enable the use of technology, 

which it did successfully within 2 years. The program is still going 

strong today and has proven to be a very smart investment. In fact, 

they continue to improve it. 

Some examples of failed projects include USAJobs, which is run 

by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) digital case management system 

called Sentinel, and, of course, the failed launch of HealthCare.gov. 

With regard to HealthCare.gov, the Administration was, fortunately, able to get things turned around quickly. More than eight 

million people—have signed up for insurance, and a number of 

them through HealthCare.gov. But, the stand-up, I think we will 

all agree, was abysmal, at least initially. 

Most struggling IT projects do not get the type of response or 

media attention that we saw with HealthCare.gov, a team of experts rushing in to try to set things straight. Rather, what typically 

happens is that we continue to sink more money into these programs as they sputter along. 

Now, the simple truth is that every organization, be it a Federal 

agency or a Fortune 500 company, faces a host of challenges in implementing large IT projects. We faced plenty of challenges in my 

last job as Governor. We are not always successful, either. But, 

from where I sit, it appears to me that the Federal Government 

seems to have more problems than the private sector, or it may 

seem that way because the government’s problems are more frequently on the front page of the paper, given that they are paid for 

with taxpayer dollars. 

Today’s hearing will explore the challenges that organizations 

both in government and in the private sector face in implementing 

IT systems. It will also examine the steps agencies need to take in 

order to be successful. Several of our witnesses today have significant experience working in the private sector, so I am especially interested in hearing about the similarities and differences between 

the government and industry. Most importantly of all, I am also interested in hearing about what lessons Federal agencies can learn 

from how industry implements IT. I also want to hear from our 

witnesses about what successes look like and what our agencies 

need to do to increase the likelihood that an IT project will succeed. 

As I oftentimes quote former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman 

Alan Blinder, now back at Princeton teaching economics, he once 

advised us in terms of how to reduce budget deficits, how to especially rein in the growth of health care costs, he said, find out what 

works and do more of that. Pretty good advice, not just on health 

care, but on a lot of other things, as well. 

Agencies need to get to the point where they succeed more often 

than not. But, all of us need to acknowledge that there will always 

be projects that, despite our best intentions, wind up failing. When 

that happens, we need to make sure agencies know how to pick up 

the pieces, avoid squandering the money we entrust to them on 

projects that should be scrapped. 

With that having been said, we are glad you are here. Senator 

Coburn and I look forward to this. There is legislation out of the 

House—I think it is called the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA)—that Congressman Issa and others 
3 

1The hearing referenced by Senator Coburn appears in the Appendix on page 109. 

are pushing and it has been reported out of the House. This is a 

very helpful hearing for us to craft what we believe we should legislate and what we should do in response to and hopefully work 

with the House to pass legislation that will help save some money 

and provide better service for the folks we work for. Thanks very 

much. Senator Coburn. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COBURN 

Senator COBURN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome 

to all of you. I appreciate your hard work. 

IT is one of the areas where we waste more money than any 

other area in the government, except the Pentagon when you take 

IT out. Let us put the other one up first. 

Twenty years ago, Bill Cohen, the Ranking Member on this Committee, had a hearing.1 My question is, what has changed? We still 

waste about 50 percent of all the money we spend on IT, and the 

question we have to be asking ourselves is, why? 

Twenty years later, we find ourselves sitting here having a discussion. Some things have changed. We have better leadership 

now. Mr. Tangherlini, what you are doing, I congratulate you. I 

have all the confidence in the Office of Management and Budget 

(OMB). I have some disappointment on the data center stuff, which 

I will talk about in the questions. The one thing that also has 

changed is we are wasting more money now than we did back then 

on IT. 

We are starting to put some good reforms in place, which I congratulate all of you on. OMB set a goal 4 years ago of closing 40 

percent of the Federal data centers and saving $3 to $5 billion by 

the end of 2015. We are not there yet. Are we making progress? 

Yes. Do we need to make more progress sooner? Yes. There is not 

the tracking that needs to go on, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). 

I would tell you, I think every Member of this Committee supports OMB’s initiative and effort and wants it to succeed, and as 

Chairman Carper mentioned, that is why we reported a bill, the 

Federal Data Center Consolidation Act by Senators Bennet, Ayotte, 

and Chairman Carper and myself, to enhance the consolidation initiative and improve the quality of data. Greater transparency, clear 

metrics, and strong oversight, and not just by us but by OMB, of 

the agencies, can make this consolidation one of OMB’s biggest successes in terms of dollars, but also in terms of how it impacts the 

rest of the Federal Government. GAO, in their recent report, now 

says that the initiative has the potential to save far more than the 

early estimates, far more, $10 billion over the next decade. 

We are going to hear about some new plans today from OMB and 

the General Services Administration (GSA). I am excited for that. 

What I do not want is for us, all of us, to lose focus on a good set 

of initiatives that are in place, making progress, and saving money. 

So, I welcome you here. I have some concerns that I will elevate 

and discuss in the question period. But, we have a pretty good 

start. It can be better, and we will focus on that. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing. 
4 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Tangherlini appears in the Appendix on page 47. 

Chairman CARPER. Thank you, Dr. Coburn. 

I would just say, this is certainly about saving money, and there 

are a lot of cooperative efforts underway—to do that. It is a great 

way to provide better service. A good example is the Veterans Administration (VA). We have these huge backlogs. We had these 

huge backlogs—they are still pretty big—for veterans applying for 

disability under the VA, and it had huge backlogs. We had, basically, a paper system and we have a lot of folks who had been trying to get disability pensions because of Agent Orange, a huge 

backlog there, a huge backlog just because people were looking for 

a way to supplement their income in the worst recession since the 

Great Depression. So, that made a bad situation even worse. But, 

we are using technology and using that technology to whittle down 

the backlog list. We are making very good progress, and that is an 

important thing. 

Another area where we are trying to save some money, but also 

to provide better service, is we have people that are on active service in the Department of Defense (DOD). They operate under one 

kind of electronic health record. Over here in the VA, they have a 

different kind of electronic health record. They do not talk to each 

other, not interoperable, and there is a great effort underway to 

make sure that they are interoperable. So that when someone 

leaves active duty and moves to veteran status, they can do so in 

a seamless way and we can provide better health care at less cost 

to our veterans. 

So, it works in a lot of ways. There are some good success stories 

out there. There are some that could be a good success story. We 

want to figure out how we can work together to make sure there 

are a lot more success stories. 

I am not going to introduce everyone individually. You all have 

been good enough to come before us before. We are delighted that 

you are here today. We appreciate your work very much. 

Dan, I am going to ask you to lead us off, and then Steven and 

David, if you would, please. Thanks so much. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE DANIEL M. TANGHERLINI,1

ADMINISTRATOR, U.S. GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION 

Mr. TANGHERLINI. Thank you very much, and good morning, 

Chairman Carper, Ranking Member Coburn, Members and staff of 

the Committee. My name is Dan Tangherlini and I am the Administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration. 

Before focusing on the topic of today’s hearing, I would like to 

take a moment to introduce to the Committee our new Deputy Administrator, Denise Roth, who, among other duties as our Chief 

Operating Officer (COO), will be working on internal GSA IT 

issues. 

The challenges of technology procurement and delivery facing the 

government have been a focus for better management and oversight throughout this Administration. Given GSA’s mission, to deliver the best value in real estate, acquisition, and technology services to the government and the American people, we believe we are 

uniquely positioned to help make a difference in these efforts. 
5 

Through better management of our own IT investments as well as 

offerings GSA provides governmentwide, GSA can support the Administration’s efforts to better manage IT and to continue improving some of the longstanding challenges. 

Since my arrival at GSA, we have been focused on consolidating 

and streamlining major functions within the agency to eliminate 

redundancy, improve oversight, and increase accountability. As 

part of GSA’s top-to-bottom review, GSA brought together all IT 

functions, budgets, and authorities from across the agency under 

an accountable, empowered GSA Chief Information Officer (CIO) in 

line with the best practices followed by many modern organizations 

today. 

GSA now has one enterprise-wide process for making IT investments, which ensures that investments are geared toward the 

highest priorities in support of the agency’s strategic goals. We 

have set internal goals to reduce ongoing operating costs to allow 

the organization to make better long-term investments using our 

enterprise-wide, data driven, zero-based IT budgeting process. 

Consolidation also provides an opportunity to adopt the best forward-leaning practices in supporting investments. In recognition of 

the need to modernize not just applications, but how we support IT 

and consistent with broader Federal efforts, GSA instituted a 

cloud-first policy that prompts all application development initiatives to look first to the GSA cloud platforms available as technology solutions before evaluating legacy platforms with higher operating costs. 

The focus of our transition has not been limited to what we build 

but also how we build it. Our move to an agile development shop 

has resulted in a significant increase in our ability to rapidly deploy and scale. Consolidated IT governance is also helping GSA realize a high-performing IT environment as effectively and efficiently as possible while also providing a level of transparency and 

accountability that will lead to continuous ongoing improvement. 

GSA also looks for opportunities to help agencies adopt new technologies and take advantage of digital services that improve mission delivery and enhance their interactions with the public. GSA 

helps to ensure that we have tools that allow the government to 

access the ingenuity of the American people to help solve government’s challenges. 

GSA manages Challenge.gov, an award winning platform to promote and conduct challenge and prize competitions governmentwide. We are also leading efforts to open government data to entrepreneurs and other innovators to fuel development of products and 

services that drive economic growth. GSA operates Data.gov, the 

flagship open government portal which enables easy access to and 

use of more than 90,000 data collections from over 180 government 

agencies. 

In addition, GSA recently announced the creation of 18F, a digital delivery team within GSA that aims to make the government’s 

digital and web services simpler, more effective, and easier to use 

to the American people. By using lessons from our Nation’s top 

technology startups, these public service innovators are looking to 

provide support for our Federal partners in delivering better digital 
6 

1The prepared statement of Mr. VanRoekel appears in the Appendix on page 53. 

services at reduced time and cost and making the government a 

better consumer of IT services. 

GSA’s internal IT reforms, acquisition solutions, and digital services are in keeping with our mission to deliver the best value in 

information technology solutions to the government and the American people. GSA still has a lot of work ahead of us and I am grateful for the Committee’s support of our reform efforts. 

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you here today and 

look forward to any questions that you might have. Thank you. 

Chairman CARPER. Thank you, Dan. There will be some questions. 

Steve, you are up. Thank you so much. 

TESTIMONY OF STEVEN L. VANROEKEL,1 U.S. CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, U.S. OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET 

Mr. VANROEKEL. Thank you, sir. Chairman Carper, Dr. Coburn, 

Committee staff, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you 

today about the best practices and factors for successful acquisition 

and implementation of Federal information technology. 

During my nearly 20 years in the private sector, I woke up every 

day focused on improving and expanding core services and customer value while also cutting costs. I brought this focus with me 

to the Federal Government. When I joined the Administration in 

2009, and the Office of Management and Budget in 2011, I found 

willing partners in this mission and have spent the past 3 years 

at OMB focused on driving innovation to meet customer needs, 

maximizing our return on investments in Federal information technology, and establishing a trusted foundation for securing and protecting our information systems. 

Constantly improving the state of Federal technology is a priority 

for this Administration and a mission that OMB takes very seriously. In these times of fiscal constraint, this means we must drive 

innovation while controlling spending by maximizing effectiveness 

and efficiency in everything we do. 

The Administration’s first term efforts largely focused on establishing mechanisms to stop the growth of IT spending, promoting 

new technology such as cloud computing, mobile, opening up Federal Government data for private sector use, enhancing cyber capabilities, and deploying Federal technology as a tool to increase efficiency and allow government to do more with less. 

In the decade prior to this Administration, the Federal IT budget 

increased at the Compound Annual Growth Rate of 7.1 percent a 

year. If spending increased at the same rate during this Administration, our current IT budget request would total $117 billion. 

However, through our PortfolioStat data-driven accountability sessions, Federal agencies enhance their analytical approaches to 

more effectively manage their IT and improve IT cost oversight. 

The result is over $2.5 billion of identified cost savings and $1.9 

billion of realized savings through the PortfolioStat process. 

During this Administration, we flatlined Federal IT spending, 

driving efficiencies and fueling innovation across the Federal technology portfolio through initiatives like data center consolidation, 
7 

cloud computing, and the Administration’s Digital Government 

strategy, all the while working to keep Federal data safe and secure. 

One of the pillars of the President’s Management Agenda is a 

focus on increased effectiveness, finding ways to deliver world class 

customer services to citizens and businesses. Our efforts underway 

on Smarter IT delivery are a key part of this work. To deliver citizens the services they expect from their government, we must shift 

the focus of Federal Government IT projects from compliance and 

process to meeting user needs. We must be intensely user-centered 

and agile, involve top talent from the private sector in government 

IT projects, and ensure agency leadership is actively engaged and 

accountable to the public for the success of the digital services of 

their agency. 

To support this effort, the Administration’s Smarter IT Delivery 

Agenda focuses on ensuring the Federal Government has, one, the 

best talent working inside government; two, the best companies 

working with the government; and, three, the best processes in 

place to make sure everyone involved can do their best work and 

be held accountable for delivering excellent results for the American people. This agenda aims to increase customer satisfaction 

with top government digital services, decrease the percentage of 

Federal Government IT projects that are delayed or over-budget, 

and increase the speed by which we hire and deploy qualified talent and vendors to work with government on these IT projects. 

As in any organization, public or private, IT excellence starts 

with having the best people executing the IT. While there are 

many talented IT professionals across our government, it is clear 

we need to broaden and deepen this talent pool to meet present 

and future needs. 

To this end, we are building a new capability called the Digital 

Service. The Digital Service will be made up of a modest team of 

some of our country’s best digital experts. This team will be housed 

in my office at OMB and it will be charged with proactively establishing standards to bring the government’s digital services in line 

with the best private sector experiences, define common platforms 

for re-use that will provide a consistent user experience, collaborate 

with agencies to identify gaps in their delivery capacity, and provide oversight and accountability to ensure we see results. 

The Digital Service is a close partnership with the 18F delivery 

team at GSA and will work side-by-side with agencies to ensure 

they have the resources and talent that they need to deliver great 

services on time, on spec, on budget, with optimal user 

functionality. 

In conclusion, it is apparent that in today’s world, we can no 

longer separate the outcomes of our Federal programs from the 

smart use of technology. By increasing an emphasis on customer 

need and making it faster and easier for individuals and businesses 

to complete transactions with the government, online or offline, we 

can deliver the world class services that citizens expect. 

Mr. Chairman, Dr. Coburn, thank you for holding this hearing 

and inviting me to speak today, and I appreciate the Committee’s 

interest and ongoing support. I am excited to continue our dialogue 

in questions today. Thanks. 
8 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Powner appears in the Appendix on page 59. 

Chairman CARPER. All right. Thank you, Steve. 

David, please proceed. 

TESTIMONY OF DAVID A. POWNER,1 DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Mr. POWNER. Chairman Carper, Dr. Coburn, we appreciate the 

opportunity to testify on how the Federal Government can better 

manage its annual $80 billion investment in information technology. 

Of this $80 billion, about three-quarters is spent on operational 

or legacy systems and the remaining goes toward new development. Therefore, it is vitally important that new systems acquisitions are managed effectively and that the government finds more 

efficient ways to deliver existing services. 

Over the past 5 years, OMB has initiated excellent efforts to do 

just that. This morning, I would like to highlight four significant 

initiatives: Data center consolidation, PortfolioStat, the IT Dashboard, and TechStat sessions. For each of these, I will highlight accomplishments to date, but also what needs to be done to get even 

more out of these initiatives. I will also discuss the report we are 

releasing at your request, Mr. Chairman, on incremental development. 

Starting with data center consolidation, OMB started a data center consolidation effort in 2010 to address the government’s low 

server utilization rates, estimated, on average, at 10 to 15 percent, 

far from the industry standard of 60 percent. This effort was also 

to result in $3 billion in savings across all departments. Our ongoing work shows that the number of centers is now more than 

10,000. About 750 have been closed or consolidated to date. Over 

$1.3 billion in savings has resulted, and agencies estimate another 

$3 billion in savings in fiscal years 2014 and 2015. Therefore, expected savings through 2015 should be around $4.5 billion. 

Chairman CARPER. Is that cumulative? 

Mr. POWNER. Yes, that is cumulative. Now, if you go beyond 

2015, Mr. Chairman, you are in that $10 billion price range that 

you mentioned, Dr. Coburn. 

Better transparency on the savings is needed, in our opinion, and 

the legislation this Committee has introduced would do just that. 

OMB recently expanded the data center consolidation effort into 

a larger initiative called PortfolioStat to eliminate additional duplicative spending in administrative and business systems. OMB reports that agencies have achieved about $2 billion in savings on 

this initiative through 2013. The target, based on our work going 

out to each agency, is actually $5.5 billion, and there are over 200 

PortfolioStat initiatives that agencies are currently working on to 

eliminate duplicative spending. It is critical that these 200 initiatives are driven to closure so that the $5 billion in savings can be 

achieved. 

Now, turning to initiatives that help better manage large IT acquisitions. The IT Dashboard was put in place to highlight the status and CIO assessments of approximately 750 major IT invest-
9 

ments across 27 departments. The accuracy of the department has 

improved over time, with certain agencies reporting more accurately than others. Here is what the Dashboard tells us. Of the 750 

major investments, about 560 are in green status, 160 are in yellow, and 40 are in red, so there are about 200 projects where the 

government will spend about $12 billion that are at risk and need 

attention. Only eight agencies report red, or high risk, projects. 

Nineteen agencies do not have high-risk investments. 

Mr. Chairman, there are three things that need to happen to 

make the IT Dashboard a better accountability mechanism. First 

of all, all major investments need to be listed on the Dashboard. 

Our work has shown that several investments, like the Department 

of Energy (DOE) supercomputers, are not listed on the Dashboard. 

Ratings need to be even more accurately reported. There are clearly more than 200 projects that are medium-or high-risk. 

And, OMB and agencies need to aggressively govern the at-risk 

investments using TechStat sessions. OMB held about 80 TechStat 

sessions and had great results that included scaling back and even 

terminating failing projects. OMB subsequently empowered CIOs 

to hold TechStat sessions with their respective agencies, a move we 

agree with, but we also strongly think that OMB should hold 

TechStat sessions on a selected basis for either troubled projects or 

projects that are top national priorities. OMB recently told us that 

they only held two TechStat sessions in 2013. This is clearly not 

enough. Agencies also need to better use IT acquisition best practices that include executive involvement in getting your requirements right early. 

Finally, a major aspect of the IT reform plan of 2010 called for 

agencies to deliver in smaller increments to be successful. Our 2011 

report on successful acquisitions proved this as all seven examples 

were increments of larger projects. The report we are releasing 

today shows that three-quarters of the IT acquisitions are not planning to deliver within 6 months, and less than half plan to deliver 

within the year. Therefore, we still have too many ‘‘big bang’’ 

projects that do not deliver anything for years and, therefore, run 

a high risk of failure. 

Chairman Carper, Dr. Coburn, thank you for your continued 

oversight of these issues. We look forward to working further with 

you. 

Chairman CARPER. Thanks so much. 

Would you go back to the beginning of your statement. There 

was a sentence near the beginning where the letters ‘‘OMB’’ appeared and the word ‘‘excellent’’ appeared. Would you go back and 

read that sentence again. 

Mr. POWNER. Yes. OMB has initiated excellent efforts to do just 

that, and they are. These are all great initiatives. All four of them 

are tremendous initiatives. The key is to drive them to closure so 

that we get the savings that are currently on the table. Data center 

consolidation: the goal was $3 billion through 2015. Agencies are 

telling us they can save $4.5 billion through 2015, and if you go 

out to about 2018, it is about $10.5 billion on the table. 

Chairman CARPER. And you have already said this before, but in 

terms of what needs to be done to make sure we reach that goal— 

just run through, if you will, some of your recommendations. It is 
10 

one thing to launch excellent initiatives. It is another thing to actually realize them. But, just highlight for us again some of the steps 

that need to be taken to make sure that we realize the promise. 

Mr. POWNER. Well, what is very good on data center consolidation, it is publicly available that you could look at the closures to 

date—— 

Chairman CARPER. Yes. 

Mr. POWNER [continuing]. And there are great success stories. I 

can tell you about some of the closures that—— 

Chairman CARPER. Good. Some of the other initiatives beyond 

the consolidation of the data centers, please. 

Mr. POWNER. Oh, beyond the data centers? 

Chairman CARPER. Yes. 

Mr. POWNER. Well, if you look at the TechStat sessions, the IT 

Dashboard, a number of things with the IT Dashboard. You have 

to get all investments on the IT Dashboard. There are some investments that are listed as non-major that are huge dollars that are 

not listed. DOE’s supercomputers are not listed on the Dashboard. 

There are satellite programs that should be listed on the Dashboard. 

So, first of all, we have to get everything on the Dashboard. A 

good example is DOD, for a long period of time they only listed 93 

major investments on the Dashboard. The Senate Armed Services 

Committee (SASC) held a hearing a couple months ago. It was 

highlighted that a number of investments were not on the Dashboard. They report 118 today. Ninety-three to 118, great progress. 

So, we have to get them all on there. 

We have to get accurate assessments on the Dashboard, and then 

we need to use TechStat sessions to fix failing projects or projects 

that are in trouble. The 80 TechStat sessions that OMB initiated 

in the 2010 and 2011 timeframe, it was excellent. There were some 

projects that were descoped, turned around. A few were terminated. It was very successful in terms of focusing on large-scale IT 

acquisitions and fixing it. We need to go back to doing more of that. 

Chairman CARPER. All right. 

Steven, are you going to sit there and take this? [Laughter.] 

Would you like to say anything? You can accept the praise, or 

just address some of the—I think you would be smart to accept the 

praise, but then say, well, David has some points here and here is 

what we are doing about it. Go ahead. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. Yes. He had me at excellent, sir. [Laughter.] 

I think that if you look at the work being done and think about 

how to get the activity we want to see in Federal IT, I am a huge 

fan and have done a lot of work to think about what kind of transparency mechanisms we are doing. Are we enhancing the IT Dashboard? What are we doing there to hold people accountable? 

I think, much like I saw throughout my career in the private sector, transparency is one part of it. You also have to set up the right 

incentives to make sure that it yields the behavior you want to see. 

Just simply going out and telling agencies, close X-amount of data 

centers, is an ends, not a means, without telling them, here is how 

to get there. You have to set up the structure, and I will give you 

an example. 
11 

If an agency has two data centers that are right next door to 

each other, share a common wall, say, and I say, close 50 percent 

of your data centers, they will take down the wall in between and 

two suddenly goes to one and they have reduced their total inventory by 50 percent. 

Instead, what we have been doing is thinking about what are the 

core elements that make closing down a data center so essential. 

It is, how much power are you using? How much square footage is 

this data center? What is your utilization of the data center, and 

all of those things. Because data centers are essential to government, and making sure that we create centers of gravity and ones 

that use low power, that have the lowest costs, that are running 

modern technology is the motivation. 

Just this week, we launched PortfolioStat 2014, so, the new 

PortfolioStat guidance actually went out to agencies yesterday. And 

in that guidance, we actually contain within a whole set of incentives and key performance indicators (KPI) that basically tell agencies, one, identify these centers of gravity. Identify a highly optimized data center. For everything else in your inventory, I either 

want you to shift that to the cloud or I want you to close it down. 

And, the mechanisms and the incentives we have set up are doing 

this. 

I talk to large private sector CIOs—General Electric, Wal-Mart, 

some of those companies. When they talk about consolidating their 

data centers, they will literally say some of their divisions will 

bring forklifts in and pick up their data centers and move them to 

a bigger room, and suddenly, five became one, which does nothing 

to drive down costs or drive efficiency or a different outcome. 

And so what we have done is not only thought about the transparency—and, by the way, the number of data centers in the inventory have grown because I expanded the definition to get more— 

I wanted to uncover everything out there to make sure we are not 

growing—— 

Chairman CARPER. Something like that happened with respect to 

improper payments—— 

Mr. VANROEKEL. Exactly. 

Chairman CARPER [continuing]. The first improper payments, the 

amount of improper payments grew, it was because agencies were 

finally reporting it and identifying it. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. That is right. We are closing, not growing. The 

inventory is growing because the diligence is going up and the 

quality of the inventory is going up. So, I wanted to get everything 

on the table and then make sure that we are bringing all that in 

and the right incentive structures. 

Chairman CARPER. Let me just ask you, anything that David 

mentioned in terms of additional steps that need to be taken to ensure that the full potential of these initiatives is realized, is there 

anything that he said that you disagree with? Is there anything 

that he has mentioned here—and this would be for any of you— 

that Dr. Coburn and I, our Committee, the Senate, the House, 

could be helpful in better ensuring that we realize the potential in 

these initiatives? Our response. This is a team sport. We are part 

of the team. 
12 

Mr. VANROEKEL. Yes. And, I agree with his point on the power 

and the results that we saw through the TechStat process. What 

we did is, we have a very finite resource in our staff at OMB. It 

is small, a double-digit number of people on the team, and we have 

a lot of statutory responsibility and a lot of other responsibilities 

we do to formulate the budget and work on lots of other things in 

the interest of Congress. 

What we did to scale that effort was actually go out and train 

employees and agency technical officials on how to run TechStat. 

We have trained over a thousand people in running TechStat and 

it is starting to become a cultural element inside turning around 

projects. 

I think the issue with TechStat is that it is, by its nature, a reactive motion. It is when something is going wrong, we step in and 

look at things, versus getting in on the front end. Yesterday, I had 

a Senate Appropriations hearing and I talked about supporting our 

fiscal year (FY) 2015 request, which really aims to build capacity 

on my team to get out in front of some of these things and do what 

we have done in a reactive way more proactively with agencies. 

Chairman CARPER. OK. The second half of my question, and I am 

over time, but I want to just maybe do it quickly. Our responsibilities—what can we do? Dr. Coburn and I, our staffs, our colleagues 

here, try to do oversight, and we are told—whenever I ask—a lot 

of times, I ask, well, what can we do to better ensure that we are 

doing the right thing there across the board in all kinds of initiatives that are oftentimes identified by GAO, on their High-Risk 

List, and what we hear again and again is, oversight, oversight, 

oversight. It actually does help. 

But, in terms of what we can do to supplement and increase the 

likelihood that we will be fully successful in these initiatives. We 

will start with you, David. What further should this Committee be 

doing under our leadership? 

Mr. POWNER. Well, first of all, I think your oversight and the 

hearings you hold on troubled projects—it is OK to be red and yellow, but are we doing something about it? And I agree with Steve 

that we need to be proactive, but the reality is, good IT governance, 

you have a lot of programs that get started, then risks come up, 

and there are a lot of risks and you need to deal with them. So, 

that is where the TechStat and strong governance is important and 

your oversight is very important there. 

I do think, because there is so much money on the table with 

data center consolidation, that your legislation is essential. I am 

not certain we are going to get to the $10.5 billion without legislation and strong Congressional oversight, where those reports go to 

you on an annual basis and we keep the foot on the gas pedal. 

Chairman CARPER. Anything else you want to add to that before 

Dr. Coburn takes over? 

Mr. TANGHERLINI. I would simply add that there is actually an 

awful lot of good that is happening within Federal IT, and as we 

focus on issues of oversight and as we do reviews, as we even do 

the stats, we should be thinking about the places where we are actually succeeding and making progress so that we can more widely 

disseminate and share that experience with agencies so that they 

can model the best behavior, not just have evidence of the worst. 
13 

Chairman CARPER. Good. Well, I think this glass is definitely 

half-full, maybe more, and we want to fill it up even more. Dr. 

Coburn. 

Senator COBURN. This is the first hearing I have been to in a 

long time that, really, there are a whole lot more positives than 

there are negatives, and I congratulate you all on it. 

David, there is a discrepancy in terms of what OMB has labeled 

as high-risk IT projects. I think they have labeled self-reporting 

from a one to a five. They have, like, 40, and I think in your testimony, it was 200. What is the difference there between you and 

Steve? Why do you see 200 and they see 40, and is it a matter of 

downgrading the risk so that you look better, or is there just a difference in the assessment, because that is a 500 percent difference. 

Mr. POWNER. Yes, Dr. Coburn. So, there are about 40 red investments on the Dashboard and about 160 yellow, so that is how we 

get to the 200 we deem at-risk investments. There are a lot more 

than 200. That includes DOD reporting zero reds—— 

Senator COBURN. Yes, which is—— 

Mr. POWNER [continuing]. And really not that—— 

Senator COBURN. Which is ridiculous. 

Mr. POWNER. Not that many yellow. I will say, though, on the 

importance of Congressional oversight, that I was recently at a 

hearing in front of the SASC. DOD is now committed. Their report 

went from 93 to 118 investments. They have committed now to update the Dashboard every 6 months, they say, but their process— 

monthly is unrealistic. That is progress. 

They also said—I thought this was very good, DOD—with their 

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) history and failure, especially 

with Expeditionary Combat Support System (ECSS), they said, if 

we have an ERP system, we are going to immediately put it as red 

on the Dashboard and manage it appropriately. I think that is actually progress, given their history and the failures they have had. 

So, that is where the Dashboard—the 200 is well understated in 

terms of projects that are at risk. There are many more. But, 

again, we do see some agencies moving in the right direction with 

more accurate reporting and doing something about it. 

Senator COBURN. Steve, were you gamed a little bit by some of 

the agencies in terms of downgrading their risk? You allowed them 

to grade it, right? You all did not grade it. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. This is self-reported, yes. 

Senator COBURN. Yes. So, have you done anything from a management standpoint of saying, hey, guys, here are the real guidelines? 

Mr. VANROEKEL. Well, I think the first order of business, much 

like the mentality I would use in the private sector, is that selfreporting is not the best mechanism—— 

Senator COBURN. Right. 

Mr. VANROEKEL [continuing]. To track this stuff, and so we put 

into place other mechanisms to do that. The first one is actually 

in the IT Dashboard. It is a feature I added where I can tell if an 

agency is rebaselining, they are moving the goal line on their cost 

or their schedule or things like that. I get, now, an indication if 

that is happening and so we can see. A lot of times in the past, 

we would see someone bright green, but they were moving the goal 
14 

line a lot and then you knew that something was wrong in that 

sense. 

The second thing is the PortfolioStat process actually establishes 

a whole host of key performance indicators that we hold agencies 

accountable to, and most of that, leading up to where we had 

today, because we had to get our arms around the growth of IT 

spend, was really focused on efficiency. It is literally, like, how 

many e-mail systems are you running, because it is unthinkable to 

run more than one. How many mobile contracts do you have? How 

many of this? Kind of rooting out duplication inside the agency. 

In 2014, the guidance that came out this week, we inflect and 

build upon that by adding effectiveness KPI. So, we ask agencies 

to identify, what are your key mission critical investments, like, 

give us the top two or three that we want to make sure that we 

are applying a new playbook to to make sure that you are taking 

21st Century principles and holding them accountable to these key 

performance indicators. So, like I said, it is about those metrics, 

about those indicators, but it has been the incentive structure we 

put behind it to get the behavior we want. 

Senator COBURN. So, having said that, you would expect the 

Dashboard to reflect more and more the numbers that GAO is actually reporting on rather than what the self-reporting is? 

Mr. VANROEKEL. I anticipate that we will see changes in the IT 

Dashboard over time that pick some of this capability up for sure, 

yes. 

Senator COBURN. All right. In terms of the TechStat, in terms of 

agencies reporting this each month, there is a real lack of performance on agencies in terms of meeting that milestone each month, 

just in terms of reporting that. Where are we on that, and what 

have you seen, David—you mentioned it in your testimony—in 

terms of compliance with that? Because as I read the briefing for 

this and read your testimony, it seems that that is one area where 

we are not having much compliance with the agencies. What do 

you see? 

Mr. POWNER. Well, I think it varies across the board, Dr. Coburn, 

and I think some agencies have very strong IT governance processes and they hold TechStat-like meetings and always have, even 

prior to TechStat existing. IRS—— 

Senator COBURN. Do you correlate that at all with a strong CIO 

position? 

Mr. POWNER. Absolutely. DHS, I think the governance processes 

they are trying to roll out, and have been for a few years now, the 

processes are very good. We have written reports, the processes are 

good. Now, we need to implement it on more and more of these 

projects. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is another example. It 

is an organization that came off our High-Risk List because they 

have pretty strong leadership. They have strong governance processes. 

We see pockets of success, so it can be done, but then we see 

other agencies that we do not get the amount of governance that 

you would expect. That is why we are strong proponents of, and I 

understand Steve is challenged to do a lot of things with his responsibilities, but when he kind of hovers in and does a couple 
15 

TechStat, it gets attention and it gets movement in the right direction. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. One of the goals, one of my agendas related to 

PortfolioStat was not only setting up a data-driven mechanism to 

start going in and understanding Federal IT. When I came to the 

job in 2011, I could not really tell you what an e-mail box should 

cost in government. I could not sit down and have a face-to-face 

with an agency and say, boy, you are spending too much, you are 

not on par, things like that. I now have that and I now know that 

because we were able to gather broad sets of data across government and process that in a way. 

Not the secret agenda, but the goal of PortfolioStat, in addition 

to just gathering that data, was I hold a face-to-face meeting with 

the Deputy Secretary and all the C-level executives of the agency 

and we sit down every summer and go through a very long set of 

metrics, KPIs, and talk about the state of affairs within their agency. The goal of those sessions is actually to teach an agency, who 

are typically not optimized around management, more optimized 

maybe around the policy agenda they are running—is to teach 

them how to run a private sector Investment Review Board. 

Senator COBURN. Yes. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. If you were in a company, you would put all 

your C-level executives. You would have your mission goals up on 

the screen. And then you would dovetail that into, what are our resources to go execute that mission and what are the tough decisions we need to make to get there? 

The Government Performance and Results Modernization Act 

(GPRA) coupled with these sessions and some principles that we 

bring in through our policy work, I think, are the combination we 

need to go drive this stuff forward, to teach them how to run this. 

I end up bolstering the authority of not only the CIO in those meetings, but the acquisition officer, the human capital officer, and it 

really takes the combination of all those people working in—the 

lawyer on the team—working in concert to meet that shared mission. 

Senator COBURN. Yes. What is your answer to David’s worry that 

there are not enough TechStat meetings and that the benefits from 

those—I guess what you are saying is, there is a diminishing return. When you started this, there was a lot of return for these 

TechStat meetings, and having two in 2013—David is worried that 

we are not getting as much bang because we are not having as 

many of those and he feels those really drive change within the 

agencies. You have had to put a budget out every year, and the 

year that you spent all this time on this, you were still putting a 

budget out, so I am not inclined to buy the time limitation as much 

as saying you have done it before, why can we not do it now? 

Mr. VANROEKEL. With the limited resources on the team, I put 

prioritization behind getting the foundation in place—— 

Senator COBURN. Which is what you did. 

Mr. VANROEKEL [continuing]. Is what I am doing around 

PortfolioStat and other things to make sure that we were not causing more TechStats to be had in the future. We had to get the foundation set up in a way that we could deliver mission solutions. We 

were not in a place when all these TechStats were happening be-
16 

fore, and what would happen is we just spent all of our time doing 

TechStats. 

Senator COBURN. Yes. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. I truly feel, if you have spending under control, 

you consolidate all your commodity computing, you get things 

streamlined in an agency in order to deliver the mission outcomes 

you want to do, you teach them how to run an Investment Review 

Board, you create this sort of virtuous cycle and cultural shift, you 

can then go in and deliver mission solutions in more 21st Century 

ways, and that is what we are—— 

Senator COBURN. But, does GSA have the capability to help you 

in that area? I would ask you, and then I would ask Dan. I mean, 

do they have the expertise where you can say, hey, guys, come over 

here and help us on this TechStat. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. Absolutely. 

Senator COBURN. And you spread your resources by utilizing 

some of them. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. Well, where we have utilized our partnership 

mostly with GSA, which I think is core to both of our missions, has 

been looking for those opportunities where, coming out of 

PortfolioStat sessions, coming out of these things, what are the core 

capabilities we should be delivering governmentwide, that we 

should not do it, every agency doing their own thing. 

Senator COBURN. Yes. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. We should just do it once. And then, to that 

end, we have done many things, like the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) cloud security program 

has come out and now is run by GSA. The mobile device program, 

we now have a family plan for government, so you can share minutes now across agencies and drive efficiencies that way. And so we 

are doing a lot to partner on that front. 

And then now, I believe, this 18F capability that Dan talked 

about in his testimony is also essential—and we are so friendly, I 

call him Dan—Administrator Tangherlini—— 

Mr. TANGHERLINI. Yes. 

Mr. VANROEKEL [continuing]. That this capability is essential, 

too, now that we are inflecting and building upon the efficiency 

work to get into effectiveness. 

Senator COBURN. OK. 

Mr. TANGHERLINI. I would just echo Steve’s comments and say 

that GSA and OMB actually do have a very collaborative relationship. Though, we have recognized that there is white space there 

that we can grow into. So, we created the 18F activity to help us 

begin to get the ability to be a better consumer of IT resources by 

having a better understanding of how IT technology is actually developed. Having coders and developers on staff is going to make it 

possible for us to help agencies better define their scopes of work 

so that they can be a better consumer of those resources. 

Working very closely with the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Office (OFPP), on things like what Steve mentioned, strategic 

sourcing, but also building stronger capabilities, such as our OASIS 

contract, our services contract, that allows agencies to buy things 

once and well, and rather than putting an awful lot of effort into 

the actual acquisition activity, they can focus more of their effort 
17 

on defining scope and understanding how to better manage that 

contract. 

So, I think that those are some of the ways we are working together, but we do believe that there are many opportunities for us 

to partner more closely. 

Senator COBURN. But, 18F is really small scale projects. 

Mr. TANGHERLINI. Eighteen-F is really small scale projects because it is really small scale. 

Senator COBURN. Yes. 

Mr. TANGHERLINI. But, it helps agencies begin to think about 

better ways to approach much larger projects and—— 

Senator COBURN. But, a case can be made, for the hard, big dollar projects, a TechStat intervention, I would call it, can be very 

beneficial, and I think that was Dave’s point. I mean, how many 

TechStat meetings have happened at DOD in the last year? 

Mr. VANROEKEL. That is a better question for DOD on specifics, 

because we train people to run—— 

Senator COBURN. I know, but the point is, half of our spending 

on IT really goes through DOD. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. Yes. 

Senator COBURN. And, more than half of our waste goes through 

DOD. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. I think the key—if I might—— 

Senator COBURN. Sure. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. I think the key is the big projects. Part of the 

cultural transformation we are in, if you were to go to a leading 

private sector company and talk to them about how are they delivering solutions, they would never say to you, we are doing big 

projects. Nobody does the big monolithic, I am going to take 3 years 

to ship something, approach. Every time you go to Facebook or 

Amazon.com, you are probably getting a new version of it and not 

even realizing that you are getting a new version. It is just updates 

happen—— 

Senator COBURN. They are doing continuous process improvement within their IT. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. Something we call agile development versus 

monolithic. The history of government IT has really been defined 

by a waterfall, monolithic approach, and part of the goal here on 

18F, on the work we have been doing and the policy framework, 

the guidelines we are doing, the playbook as part of our smarter 

IT, is all about how do we get out of this compliance waterfall culture and do more of an agile culture. 

Senator COBURN. Yes, I agree. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. I want to know what agencies can ship in 60 

days, not what they can ship in 3 years. 

Senator COBURN. Yes. I am way over time and I—— 

Mr. VANROEKEL. Sorry. 

Senator COBURN. I guess I take it from you that you are pretty 

tight on—you are going to do the TechStats that you think you 

need to do, and numbers do not matter, outcomes matter. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. I think proactivity matters a lot. 

Senator COBURN. OK. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. And, I think getting in front of a lot of this stuff 

versus reacting to it is essential. 
18 

1The chart referenced by Senator Carper appears in the Appendix on page 107. 

2The chart referenced by Senator Carper appears in the Appendix on page 108 

[Pause.] 

Senator COBURN. Tom and I just discussed—I have a lot of other 

questions. I am going to put them into written form and then get 

you to answer them back, OK. 

[Pause.] 

Chairman CARPER. I am going to ask our staff to put up a couple 

of posters, please. 

The focus of this hearing is to examine the best practices and the 

critical factors that lead to successful acquisition of information 

technology investments. Both GAO and the organizations that Mr. 

Chenok represent—I think he is going to be on our next panel, but 

I think he represents the Industry Advisory Council—have done 

some work on that question. 

I had asked that a couple of posterboards be printed up that list 

the critical success factors that GAO found and the 7–S for Success 

Framework1 that Mr. Chenok will testify about in a few minutes. 

But, I would want to ask this panel to comment on these exhibits, 

whether they agree with these findings and any other thoughts 

that you all might have as we try to determine what it takes to 

successfully implement IT projects in the Federal Government. 

The first one that I am looking at here is Common IT Investment 

Acquisition Critical Success Factors.2 It is not a top 10, but it is 

a top 9. I would like for you all just to look down that list, and 

then, if you will, the 7–S for Success Framework that has been provided for us and white paper by Mr. Chenok. They are going to be 

releasing it in conjunction, I think, with this hearing. 

But, David, if you want to lead off and just comment on these 

success factors, if you would, please. 

Mr. POWNER. Yes. I think there is a lot of commonality between 

the two lists, and what this is really about is governance. It starts 

with governance, getting the senior executives engaged on these 

projects. A lot of failures, we do not have executive sponsorship. 

There is a lot up here about having the right staff, having the right 

stakeholders, and that includes the business partners on these IT 

acquisitions, getting your requirements right up front, and then 

there are some things on testing. 

But, I would like to highlight one key point here, Mr. Chairman, 

and it is on No. 6, software development is agile, and piggyback off 

of what Steve said. These common success factors, the nine, they 

were based off of seven projects that were all increments of larger 

projects. So, going small matters. We do not go small enough in the 

Federal Government. 

The IT Reform Plan of 2010 had a requirement that we deliver 

within 12 months. Steve upped the ante at OMB and said, we are 

going to now require 6 months. So, we did a review—we are releasing the report today of 90 major IT acquisitions. About a quarter 

of them are planning to deliver within 6 months. Less than half are 

planning to deliver in a year. So, many of these projects go years 

without delivering. 

Steve is absolutely right. We need to go small. That is the big 

difference between government and the private sector. They go 
19 

smaller much better, OK. When I was in the private sector 10 

years ago, we were doing 90-day deliverables all the time. 

So, what do we do to fix it? In that report, we have a recommendation that in their Exhibit 300 process, that agencies— 

there are about 275 of the 760 investments, about 275 are in development, OK, the rest are more in legacy. Two-hundred-and-seventy-five—it is not that many governmentwide. They should clearly 

identify whether they are delivering in 6 or 12 months, whatever 

we want to pick. I do not care. You can choose either one. And if 

they are not delivering at least within a year, we ought to think 

real hard about whether those projects ought to be funded. That is 

how you would fix it. That would be the solution. 

Chairman CARPER. Good. Thanks. 

Same question. I want to ask you to compare these two lists for 

success. As David says, there is a lot of common ground here. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. Yes. I think they are very common, and actually, we used both of these lists, the 7–S in draft form and the GAO 

recommendations, to inform a lot of the playbook that we established for this new Digital Service effort that we have that is basically saying, what are the key performance indicators we want to 

hold agencies to on the mission side. 

I think the thing that takes me, the perspective I have across 

here, is if you read through both of these, you could not just apply 

the title of CIO to this list. I see acquisition elements on here. I 

see people elements on here. I see probably some things that need 

legal interpretation inside agencies on this list. 

One of the challenges we have—but, I think, opportunities we 

have—is really around how do we get this more coordinated effort 

across the C-level executives inside our agencies so they are working in concert to the mission outcomes we want to see. Oftentimes, 

I will hear from CIOs that say they walk down the hall and talk 

to their acquisition official and they have some innovative way they 

have thought about delivering some solution that is completely 

within the law in their interpretation, and maybe even another 

agency has done it, but their acquisition person will say no. Or, you 

have some other aspect where you cannot think in this module a 

way to get funding and break a contract down or get your funding 

from your Chief Financial Officer (CFO) established in that way. 

And so there are things I think we need to do in more common 

ways. 

One of the things we are doing this year is we are sort of lovingly 

calling it the TechFAR, which is we are taking case law examples 

of great, successful, kind of 21st Century approaches to acquisition 

and we are compiling them and sharing those with the agencies. 

So, saying, if you want to take this agile approach, here is another 

agency that has done it. Here is the section of the Federal Acquisition Requirements they used. Here is how they approached it, and 

maybe even sample contract language they used to do that. 

We also launched, and had an open dialogue with the public the 

last 2 weeks that just closed on Monday, asking innovative small 

companies, what are barriers you are facing when wanting to come 

and do work for the government? Is it reporting requirements? Is 

it barriers to entry to get into the procurement lifecycle and cycle? 

Is it things like that? I did a trip to the West Coast. We had other 
20 

people doing a lot of outreach to get lots of interest in people who 

are not traditionally working with government to research what it 

would take and then give us their perspective on it. We anticipate 

out of that work we are going to have administrative, legislative, 

and possibly some regulatory suggestions on changes we could do 

to drive and lower some of those barriers for those small, innovative companies to work with government. 

Chairman CARPER. All right. Dan, just anything brief in terms 

of lists for success, so what finds favor and maybe what does not? 

Mr. TANGHERLINI. No, I would like to build on what Steve said, 

if you look at this list and say, this cannot just be a list of ‘‘to do’s’’ 

for a CIO. We have a consolidated, empowered, talented, and focused CIO at GSA, but he, too, and his team would fail in delivering high-quality IT solutions if he did not have the support of, 

say, from the GAO list No. 3, senior department and agency executives supporting the program. He would fail if he did not have No. 

4 and No. 5 from the GAO list, and No. 5 and No. 6 from the 7– 

S for Success list, which is to constantly work with your end users 

and the people who are actually going to touch the system to know 

whether the system is going to work and meet their needs. 

I also think that No. 4 from the 7–S list is one that does not get 

enough attention, as well, shared technology and business architecture. There is no reason to continually reinvent the wheel. There 

is no reason why we cannot take the benefits of the billions of dollars that the taxpayers have already spent on building systems and 

we cannot make them extensible and use them more widely. 

Chairman CARPER. I have one more question, but, Dr. Coburn, 

let me just say, I know you said you would submit some questions 

for the record—— 

Senator COBURN. Yes, I will ask a few more. 

Chairman CARPER. Please, go ahead. 

Senator COBURN. David, I want to talk about incremental development, because one of the holes I see is a lack of compliance on 

incremental development. Steven said that is important, except we 

do not see that coming from the agencies. As a matter of fact, 6 

months, hardly any of them are meeting it at all, and then we are 

at a year. So, talk about where you see the hole in terms of complying with this incremental development idea and what we do 

about it. 

Mr. POWNER. Well, I think we have, and I think Steve put it very 

well, there is a history in the Federal Government to go with the 

waterfall approach. So, this is something new. Change is slow. But, 

if you want to get serious, and I think you stepped out for a second, 

but I will repeat what I said earlier. If you want to really fix the 

incremental—the IT Reform Plan of 2010 said, we are going to do 

everything in 12 months. So, let us get serious about that. 

In the Exhibit 300’s, there are only about 275 major IT acquisitions when you look at the 760 investments, because a lot of it is 

legacy spend. Take those 275 investments, identify in their Exhibit 

300 on an annual basis what they are delivering within the year. 

If they are not delivering anything, do not fund it. Do not fund it. 

Senator COBURN. So—— 

Mr. POWNER. That is one way to get serious about it. Now, granted, there will be exceptions and waivers. But, if you want to get 
21 

serious about incremental development, you could tackle those 275 

investments. 

Senator COBURN. So, Steve, what is your response to that? 

Mr. VANROEKEL. I think—— 

Senator COBURN. If an agency is not going to be complying in incremental development, why would you fund them? 

Mr. VANROEKEL. I think the key here is to look at, like I have 

said, and I sound like a broken record, not only the, how are we 

tracking this, how are we funding it, but looking at what incentives 

are we putting in place and how are we kind of shaping the system 

of government, the systems behind the scenes, to get this outcome 

that we want. 

We still have a long history of certifying IT professionals in the 

waterfall methodology. So, we are changing that. Our acquisition 

professionals who do acquisitions are kind of pre-programmed to do 

these big monolithic approaches, so we need to change that. That 

is this effort around the TechFAR that I mentioned, where we are 

taking all these examples and getting this community to happen. 

We need companies working with government that know how to do 

this well, because they are all pre-programmed to kind of do these 

big waterfall approaches. So, we are working not only with the incumbents and saying, what are the incentives we need to do to get 

you to turn these things in this way, but writing requirements in 

a way that foster this, as well as looking at how do we get new 

companies into government that are going to bring these approaches. 

Senator COBURN. Given your history prior to government service 

and the fact that I have a son-in-law with a Master’s in computer 

engineering and electrical engineering and works for one of the big 

firms that does this, my observation is big business does not do this 

a whole lot better than government in terms of the stories and the 

tragedies and the failures that I see. 

And, so I want to go back to my point. If, in fact, we believe incremental management and incremental reporting is an important 

way for us to see milestone development, and also to exclude the 

catastrophes, why are we not putting more pressure on the agencies? I know you are building the infrastructure, and I get that. 

But at the same time, if we are not going to have some reporting 

6 months or a year of whether we are reaching these milestones, 

they are just not even coming back with the information, we are 

going to have another couple of disasters. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. So—— 

Senator COBURN. It is going to happen. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. Mm-hmm. 

Senator COBURN. And, so why would we not have as a policy, 

give us the incremental development? 

Mr. VANROEKEL. So, I think the private sector is in an inflection 

where we are starting to see this take hold in even the larger corporations out there and definitely taking a lot of the best practices 

you saw on these two sheets up here. 

As far as accountability with agencies, PortfolioStat 2014, as I 

mentioned, makes this inflection into effectiveness. It basically says 

for agencies, identify your mission critical investments to us, and 

then we hold them accountable to a set of—basically, informed by 
22 

these two sheets—a set of KPIs, key performance indicators, that 

indicate agility, that indicate this modular approach—— 

Senator COBURN. But they are not reporting—— 

Mr. VANROEKEL. They do—and part of PortfolioStat 2014 is 

quarterly reporting against those KPIs, and so we are holding people accountable with a yearly face-to-face meeting where we sit 

down, as I mentioned, with the C-level executives. So, there is a 

mechanism and process. 

Senator COBURN. So, you are saying you have it covered without 

them—you have it covered, even though when we see it from GAO, 

we see a hole in that. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. PortfolioStat 2014 launched yesterday, so this 

is a—— 

Senator COBURN. Yes. So you—— 

Mr. VANROEKEL [continuing]. This is a looking forward. 

Senator COBURN. So you say you are fixing that? 

Mr. VANROEKEL. This is a looking forward motion. 

Senator COBURN. OK. All right. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. Yes, sir. 

Senator COBURN. Good enough. Thank you. 

Chairman CARPER. Thank you, Tom. 

When I look at these factors as laid out by GAO on these 

posterboards and on this coalition that Mr. Chenok represents, 

they appear to center on getting key stakeholders lined up and 

properly incentivized, getting the right people on a project, setting 

up a good review process, as well. 

Our House colleagues, Chairman Issa, Elijah Cummings, and 

Gerry Connolly, introduced an IT reform bill that has passed the 

House, I think by a pretty broad margin. And while we appreciate 

their hard work on the legislation and share many of their same 

goals—based on these charts, it is not clear how many of these critical success factors can actually be encapsulated in legislation. 

I just want to ask if you have any additional thought. We talked 

about this a little bit earlier in terms of what we can do to be helpful and constructive on the legislative side. Do you have any additional thoughts on that and where legislation may be necessary to 

improve Federal agency ability to develop and manage IT systems? 

Steve. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. So, I think the challenge, as I mentioned earlier, is part of this, and many of the best practices you see here are 

really about comprehensive management, and that is probably the 

hardest thing to legislate, is thinking about how do you bring management principles to bear—— 

Chairman CARPER. Like, how do you legislate common sense. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. Well, I will not make comments. 

A starting point if you look at a bill, a proposed bill like FITARA, 

is that I think there is a disconnect between appropriators and authorizers. I think there is a money aspect here as much as there 

is an authorization aspect and thinking about that kind of duality 

in the work that is being done. 

I think that we have an opportunity with incentives and thinking 

about what outcomes we want to see. I also fear a lot of what we 

see in legislation that looks at technology is technology is moving 

so quickly. If we were sitting here 15 years ago, the notion of doing 
23 

these sort of agile approaches, or even Internet kind of approaches 

in government, were not as self-apparent as they are today. And, 

so, looking at how do we really think about what outcomes we are 

trying to drive versus what are the tactical ways we are going to 

get there is essential, because we are just moving so fast. We are 

moving fast enough that our procurement system or other things 

cannot keep up with it, and so we need to think about modern approaches to get there. 

Chairman CARPER. OK. Thanks. 

Same question, Mr. Powner, David, please. 

Mr. POWNER. We have been pretty consistent saying that in 

terms of legislation, there are two things—that I think the two biggest areas when you look at these initiatives, on the legacy side of 

the fence, it is data center consolidation, and we believe strongly 

that legislation that calls for annual reporting on what is being 

done will help hold everyone accountable. So, I think legislation is 

very important there. 

The other part of legislation that comes up frequently, too, is 

what do we do with the Dashboard? The Dashboard is very important from a transparency point of view and we do not want that 

to go away. The CIO ratings actually have helped with CIO accountability and authorities, and we hear a lot about, well, the cost 

and schedule data is not accurate. This is—— 

Chairman CARPER. I am sorry, what is—— 

Mr. POWNER. The cost and schedule data is inaccurate, what is 

behind the Dashboard, behind the ratings. Well, let’s get it accurate. Most of these agencies have about 40 to 50 major IT investments and accurate reporting—760 major investments is not that 

many when you look at 27 departments. So, we need to get the CIO 

ratings accurate and we need to get the costs and schedule fixed, 

and that transparency mechanism is vitally important for oversight. 

And, so, I think the IT Dashboard, you need to be careful on 

what you report out of it, but I think having that mechanism in 

place going forward is very important. 

Chairman CARPER. In terms of how the House-passed legislation 

addresses the points you have just raised, which one does it address and, maybe, which ones does it not? 

Mr. POWNER. I think the House legislation addresses both data 

center consolidation and the Dashboard. I think both those items 

are in that legislation. 

Chairman CARPER. OK. All right. Thanks. 

Dan, same question. 

Mr. TANGHERLINI. I would just echo what Steve said. I think it 

is very hard to create a legislative framework that requires and demands engagement at the executive level in IT projects. You can 

require it, but it will not necessarily result in it. 

So, I think what we need to do is continue to work, as we have 

been, closely with Steve to try to bring these best practices into our 

agencies, and we need to make sure there is transparency, and as 

a result, accountability through strong oversight from Congress, 

seeing how we are performing and getting the work done that we 

say we are going to get done. 
24 

I also think that we should be careful. One of the problems we 

have with doing anything, frankly, in government, IT among them, 

is how many different layers and policies and structures we have 

built up over time. As Steve said, this stuff is changing very fast, 

and do our requirements keep up with the speed and the pace of 

that change? 

Senator COBURN. Can I interject? We passed the DATA Act out 

of here, and the thing that will not change is the requirement to 

know what you spent and where you spent it and be able to account for it. Those are basic principles, because you are never going 

to get a metric unless you know those numbers, and I think that 

is one of the things that David is saying. And the push-back from 

OMB on the DATA Act was, this is going to be so hard to do, 

which, all that tells you is they do not know where it is. It is not 

in getting the data to put onto it. It is, we do not know the data, 

which goes back to what Steve says, you are teaching management 

and you cannot manage what you cannot measure. 

So, the whole idea behind this was to get data, not just for transparency for the American public, but to force the agencies to actually be able to measure what they are doing and have to report on 

it, because if you have to report on it, you are going to have to collect the data. And the hard job—I mean, we are giving the Pentagon 41⁄2 years to come forward with data on where they spend 

their money. They do not know where they spend their money. 

So, I really appreciate, Steve, what you are doing in terms of implementing a management capability, because that has been the 

real problem. It is not that we do not have great employees. It is 

we have a skill set that has not been up to the task, and what you 

are doing is very important in that regard. 

I have one other question. GAO’s recommendation is for OMB to 

issue more specific guidance. What do you think about that recommendation? 

Mr. VANROEKEL. Are there more specifics about that recommendation? 

Senator COBURN. Well—— 

Mr. VANROEKEL. More specifics, guidance and—— 

Senator COBURN. In the incremental development. 

Mr. VANROEKEL. I think a lot of what we are doing is in the direction of how to do incremental development, including getting in 

front of the agencies to work with them to teach the—— 

Senator COBURN. So, you feel you are actually issuing specific 

guidance and they just did not see it, or—— 

Mr. VANROEKEL. No, I think it is not just about guidance. We do 

incremental guidance. Part of the key performance indicators as 

part of our PortfolioStat guidance that went out yesterday has incremental guidelines in it. So, I think we are definitely not only 

satisfying the spirit of incremental guidance, but doing very specific things. 

Senator COBURN. All right. 

Dan, I just had one question. You are the agency that should 

model this behavior better than anybody. Are your IT projects 

within GSA meeting the 6-month timeframe in terms of incremental development? 
25 

Mr. TANGHERLINI. Some of them are, and we are working on 

making all of them meet those requirements. So, as I said at the 

end of my testimony, we still see a lot of hard work ahead for the 

systems that we are developing. But, we are hoping that the work 

that we are engaged in and the lessons that we learn are 

transferrable to our agency partners so that we can structure the 

way we do business with them in such a way that they can actually 

get those outcomes, as well. 

Senator COBURN. OK. Thank you. 

Chairman CARPER. One of the adages with respect to leadership 

is, do not just do as I say, do as I do. And to the extent that you 

are setting a good example for the others, it is just very helpful. 

I think we are going to start a vote here, a series of votes, and 

with that, I have one last quick question—no, I will ask it for the 

record. I have several more questions for the record. 

I will just conclude by saying this before we welcome our second 

panel. This is not an easy thing to do. It is a hard thing to do. In 

fact, it is a lot of hard things to do and it requires good planning, 

good implementation, appropriate funding, good oversight, trying to 

figure out what is working and what is not working and do more 

of what is working. 

We struggled with this in State Government when I was Governor of my State, honestly, and one of our problems was having 

the kind of human resources that we needed to actually develop, 

conceive of these plans, these kind of projects, and then have the 

people in place who could actually work with the private sector to 

implement them and do that in a cost effective way. 

And we found that we would just train people to do the IT work 

within State Government, and just when they would get to be really skillful, they would get hired away, make more money and leave 

us. We finally figured out, the administration after time, to pay 

them more money and to reduce the kind of turnover and be able 

to attract good people and keep them for a longer period of time. 

So, I know these are not easy things that we are asking you and 

the administration to do. We want to play a constructive role. We 

got some great input and insights on what can be constructed. We 

have a data center bill that is out of Committee, waiting attention 

by the full Senate. We might even try to have it hotlined and get 

it passed under unanimous consent. We understand that that 

would be a constructive thing. I think the bill that comes out of the 

House, the FITARA bill of Mr. Issa and others, I think it is one 

of the elements of their legislation, so there are some common 

grounds. 

But, we want to continue to work with you. We want to stay in 

touch with you. We do not want to pass legislation that is counterproductive or unproductive. You will continue to—I am sure you 

will—make sure we are a guided missile, not an unguided missile. 

All right. With that, thank you for your continued dedication and 

diligence here and keep working. I think we are on the right track. 

Thanks so much. 

And with that, we will welcome our second panel. Initially, we 

had a vote that was supposed to start, or a series of votes that was 

supposed to start at 11. They did not, and then we are told there 

is a series of votes starting at 11:15, and that has not happened 
26 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Chenok appears in the Appendix on page 79. 

yet, so we will go as far as we can, but my inclination is to go 

ahead and go as far as we can without taking a break. 

I want to welcome our second panel. Dan Chenok is Executive 

Vice Chair of the Industry Advisory Council, the industry partner 

to the American Council for Technology (ACT), recognized as a premier public-private partnership in the government IT community. 

The ACT—I am just going to call it by its regular name, Industry 

Advisory Council (IAC). I do not like those acronyms, and this is 

one I am not going to learn. But, the Industry Advisory Council 

provides a wide range of programs and services to facilitate communications and collaboration and education. Mr. Chenok will become Chair, I am told, what, July 1. There is more I could say 

about you, Mr. Chenok, but I am not going to do it today. I want 

to welcome you, thank you for your good work and being here 

today. 

Next is Karen Evans, no stranger to this Committee. Nice to see 

you again. She serves as the National Director for the U.S. Cyber 

Challenge, the nationwide talent search and skills development 

program focused specifically on the cyber force. She has been great 

to work with as a servant to the people of our country and working 

with us for many years. We are just happy to see you again, and 

welcome, both of you. 

Please proceed with your statements. Dan, if you want to go first, 

and Karen, we will ask you to followup, please. Thank you. 

TESTIMONY OF DANIEL J. CHENOK,1 EXECUTIVE VICE CHAIR, 

INDUSTRY ADVISORY COUNCIL, AMERICAN COUNCIL FOR 

TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRY ADVISORY COUNCIL 

Mr. CHENOK. Thank you, Chairman Carper, and thanks to Dr. 

Coburn, as well—— 

Chairman CARPER. He will be back shortly. 

Mr. CHENOK [continuing]. And to the Committee for holding this 

hearing and for the opportunity to testify. 

I am here in my capacity as the Executive Vice Chair of the Industry Advisory Council. IAC is the industry partner for the nonprofit American Council for Technology, an organization led by government IT officials. This unique government industry partnership, 

referred to as ACT–IAC, provides an objective, vendor-neutral, and 

ethical forum to improve government. 

As this Committee has highlighted, every Federal agency relies 

on IT to provide services and conduct operations. Any major program, project, or transformation involving IT brings great potential 

for positive change and benefits, but also brings risks to be managed. 

Over the past several months, ACT–IAC has joined a number of 

stakeholder groups in a dialogue with OMB and other government 

leaders regarding how best to improve the government’s capacity to 

manage IT programs effectively. We have drawn on our unique position as a government industry partnership to identify best practices and lessons learned in both sectors and formulated an initial 

set of critical success factors for IT and a framework that you indicate here on the posters we refer to as 7–S for Success. 
27 

Before addressing the 7–S Framework, I would note that government and industry share many common elements with regard to 

the implementation of large-scale IT systems as well as important 

differences. Complex IT programs in both sectors are characterized 

by multiple stakeholders, large and organizationally diverse project 

teams, and the need for agility given technological change. 

Government IT programs do involve unique elements, as well. 

These include laws and rules that can require significant time to 

revise, if needed; a budget process where planning occurs up to 30 

months before the money is actually spent; and limited knowledge 

about how to leverage the acquisition process to promote innovation. Adapting commercial best practice to help improve how government acquires and manages IT programs must account for these 

elements in order to succeed. 

I will now turn briefly to the 7–S Framework itself. The first success factor is stakeholder commitment and collaborative governance. Most complex programs involve numerous stakeholders and 

often multiple agencies, contractors, and other non-government 

constituencies. There should be clear lines of accountability and responsibility for program goals among these players, as well as engagement with key stakeholders, including oversight organizations 

like OMB, GAO, and Congress. 

The second factor is a skilled program manager (PM) and team. 

There must be an accountable and qualified senior leader of the 

program. The PM should ensure that a sound, integrated program 

team includes strong leaders who have consistent performance 

measures related to system and program milestones to maximize 

the likelihood of positive outcomes. 

The third factor is systematic program reviews. In addition to assessing progress against programmatic goals, governance leaders 

and the PM should celebrate success and identify problems promptly for correction. Reviews should include senior representatives 

from key contractors, where appropriate, to ensure agreement on 

status, risks, and necessary actions. 

The fourth factor is shared technology and business architecture. 

Major IT programs involve complex interfaces with multiple systems. A business and technology architecture can guide activities 

across the team while remaining flexible enough to encourage 

changes during development and execution. The architecture 

should also address how new technologies and business processes 

will be integrated with legacy systems. 

The fifth factor is a strategic, modular, and outcomes-focused acquisition strategy. The PM must collaborate with the acquisition 

organization and other government and industry stakeholders to 

develop an acquisition strategy that supports program goals. The 

acquisition process should start well before contract award, include 

market research and requirements identification, and lay out goals, 

timelines, and budget linkages. Procurements should also have consistent outcomes-based incentives across contracts. 

The sixth factor is software development that is agile. An innovative IT approach, as you heard earlier, is found in agile software 

development under which applications are developed in an iterative 

fashion with small-scale rollouts, frequent feedback from end users, 

and communication with leaders on changes needed throughout. 
28 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Evans appears in the Appendix on page 99. 

This approach reduces risks and increases the chances for program 

success. 

The seventh and final success factor is security and performance 

testing throughout. Modules should be tested and released in 

phases throughout design development and operations, both for individual components and end-to-end system performance. 

Chairman Carper, Dr. Coburn, and Members of the Committee 

thank you for the opportunity, again, to testify here today, and I 

look forward to answering any questions you may have. 

Chairman CARPER. Dan, thank you very much. Thanks for your 

testimony, and thank you for the seven ‘‘S’’s. 

All right, Karen. Please proceed. 

TESTIMONY OF KAREN S. EVANS,1 PARTNER, KE&T PARTNERS, 

LLC 

Ms. EVANS. Good morning, Chairman Carper and Ranking Member Coburn, when he returns, and Committee staff members. I am 

pleased to be invited back to share my views on identifying critical 

factors for success in information technology acquisitions. My remarks today will describe best practices and success factors for 

managing information technology systems that the government can 

learn from industry. 

The Federal Government will spend nearly $80 billion on information technology this year, and despite guidance and oversight 

from Congress, GAO, and OMB, the Federal IT projects too frequently incur cost overruns and schedule delays and end up contributing little to agency mission outcomes. Frequently, these failures result from well-known hazards that experienced practitioners 

have learned to avoid by adopting specific procedures, best practices, that circumnavigate these pitfalls. 

Other times, the project failure could be traced to someone not 

doing what they were supposed to do. The technology did not play 

a trick on them. This was not an unforseen outside force dooming 

the project. No, in every case, someone missed their block and let 

a defender sack the quarterback. The reflexive response is to add 

another layer of rules to prevent someone from making that bad 

decision again. This is the wrong way to go, as it adds layer upon 

layer of bureaucracy and eventually grinds the process to a halt. 

One cannot mandate good outcomes, nor can Congress legislate 

to preclude failure. Rather, the IT acquisition system must foster 

a culture that allows and tolerates a continuing learning cycle to 

improve overall performance. Results, whether they are good or 

bad, provide important feedback that needs to be integrated into an 

overall management framework. The goal must be to enable success, not to preclude failure. 

My written testimony included critical success factors that the 

Committee could easily influence, should it choose to do so. However, I would like to highlight one factor in particular, which is the 

need for leadership at the departments and the agencies. 

The Chief Information Officer is the person in the C-suite who 

should have the capacity to translate technology issues into business-speak for other business leaders. The CIO position is currently 
29 

under scrutiny, as the original purpose of the position is not necessarily working as envisioned, both in private sector and in government. 

Whether this person is a CIO, a Chief Risk Officer, a Chief Innovation Officer, or a Chief Strategist, or some other chief, it is necessary to have a leader who can speak to senior executives in terms 

that are relevant to them and can state the potential consequences 

in terms of political and policy values. For example, the public 

opinion impact on promised level of service or unfavorable news 

stories, declines in earnings per share. Right now, the CIO is in a 

unique position to ensure that this happens and needs to provide 

the leadership in order to avoid the mistakes of the past. 

Overall, Federal CIOs and commercial CIOs are similar, with the 

same job description: To be the technology-savvy member of the executive team, to provide value through innovation, to manage data 

as a strategic asset, and to lead a team of technologists and enable 

organizational greatness. 

There is widespread perception that the government is inherently incompetent at implementing IT systems, not just because of 

the recent high-profile failure, but because that follows a string of 

high-profile failures. However, I have also seen a lot of IT projects 

that were tremendously successful, that delivered on time and 

within budget, that are helping the American Government to serve 

the American people, that did not get newspaper stories written 

about them. So, rather than trying to prevent failure, we should try 

to promote success by implementing best practices, assigning qualified program managers, and monitoring with accurate metrics. IT 

is a neutral enabler for program delivery, and good management is 

nonpartisan and can support all policies. 

I thank you for the opportunity to testify today and I look forward to answering questions. 

Chairman CARPER. And I look forward to asking them and hearing your answers. 

We have a series of four votes in a row. Dr. Coburn has gone to 

vote on the first vote, and then come back. We are going to take 

turns here. We do not want to have a lot of downtime. He will be 

presiding for part of the time; I will be presiding for part of the 

time. Between the two of us, we hope to provide some good questions for you and have a good conversation. 

That having been said, we are going to recess just for a very 

short period of time. When Dr. Coburn returns, he will take up the 

gavel and begin asking questions. 

So, thank you very much. With that, we are in recess. 

[Recess.] 

Senator COBURN. [Presiding.] I did not get to hear your statements, but I have been briefed by my staff. First of all, thank you 

for being here. 

My first question is, what did you think? Did you hear the testimony? What are your thoughts? Go ahead, Dan. 

Mr. CHENOK. From the first panel? 

Senator COBURN. Yes. 

Mr. CHENOK. So, I think it is important that there was wide 

agreement that this is not simply a technology issue, that it is an 

issue that crosses multiple functions in agencies, including acquisi-
30 

tion, finance, budget, as well as mission leadership, and that is 

really, I think—it was implied in the statement, but the purpose 

of technology to support agencies, just like it is in a private sector 

organization, is to improve the mission and service of that organization. And so—— 

Senator COBURN. So, management. 

Mr. CHENOK. Improving management to improve the outcome for 

either citizens or the customers of a company is really the reason 

why technology exists. So, it is important to talk further, I think, 

about that integration. 

Senator COBURN. OK. Karen, what were your thoughts? 

Ms. EVANS. What I heard was a debate between what is happening today, so a tactical approach, so that is a lot of what GAO 

is putting forward—things that have already launched, the tactical, 

we have to bring them to conclusion—and then the strategic outlook of how do you fix this in the long term, which was described 

by Steve and the GSA Administrator about how do you fix this so 

that it does not occur in the long term. And that you are trying to 

fix the systemic issues so that you can then launch new projects 

with a certain level of confidence that you know that rigor is going 

to be there. 

But, there is the concern that GAO has, that you cannot lose 

sight of what you have already launched because it is $80 billion, 

and in their particular case, they outlined very specifically about 

projects and programs that are in the pipeline that you want to 

make sure that those dollars actually achieve results. 

Senator COBURN. My take-away, and actually, it is pretty well 

governmentwide—one of the reasons I am a big Jeh Johnson fan 

is I think he is a good manager. I think he has good leadership 

skills, and we are already starting to see some of those changes at 

Homeland Security. But, the big thing I have observed all my time 

in government is a deficit in leadership, a deficit in management 

skills. And, I think you heard from Steve today—he is an impressive guy, and he gets the big picture and the short picture, and he 

is kind of transitioning from the ‘‘fix it’’ to prepare to make sure 

it stays that way. All right. 

You have been a CIO in the Federal Government. You have tried 

to manage IT at OMB before. Based on your experience, what 

should be our expectations? 

Ms. EVANS. For IT performance overall? 

Senator COBURN. Yes. 

Ms. EVANS. So, as Dan said and as I indicated in my testimony, 

IT is an enabler, so it is a means to an end. It should not be the 

whole thing itself, which I do believe, and this is a management 

issue that you are bringing up, is that the government has a tendency to really get focused around the IT solution itself versus what 

it is actually trying to accomplish. 

That is one of the biggest differences that I see now that I am 

on the outside, and areas that I maybe could have helped more 

when I was on the inside is really stressing what is the outcome 

that you are trying to achieve with that investment and how soon 

will you get there, versus, well, we have to have a Human Resource 

(H.R.) system, or we have to have a financial management—— 
31 

Senator COBURN. A metric measurement. OK. How often, when 

you were at OMB, did you use the budget to enforce management 

changes, in other words, a real hammer? 

Ms. EVANS. All the time. [Laughter.] 

I would say, all the time, consistently. And some of the things 

that were discussed earlier and some of the challenges with agile 

development or breaking things into modular development, and 

Dan highlighted that, is that the appropriation process within the 

government, you are always working at least on a 24-month if not 

30-month cycle. So, in private industry, that is not the case. It is 

12 months. So, to deliver in 6 months or 12 months is realistic 

within private industry because they already think in those terms. 

The government people are thinking in 2-to 3-year increments because that is the way the appropriations process works. 

So, what is critical is being able to break it down into smaller 

increments and then use the tools that OMB has available to them 

to either make sure that a spend plan comes in that clearly outlines and that you have an agreed upon implementation plan so 

that you can hold them accountable to those milestones. 

Those are the types of things that we did on what we called— 

which you are very familiar with—the Management Watch List, 

the High-Risk List—— 

Senator COBURN. Yes. 

Ms. EVANS [continuing]. That we used those types of tools so that 

we could make sure that the money that Congress appropriated for 

that big outcome was actually being achieved with steps in between. It is hard to see a lot of those deliverables, especially if it 

is an internal project, like a financial management system or an 

H.R. system, because those deliverables are not publicly available 

for everyone to see. 

Senator COBURN. Yes. OK. What did you do with the failing IT 

programs? 

Ms. EVANS. We would have to evaluate what the program is for. 

So, for example, Senator Carper highlighted the Sentinel program, 

and we have had these discussions before. When a program starts, 

or a project starts in the first place, it is usually in response to 

some type of business need. So, the business need really does not 

go away. Like, in the case of the Sentinel project, the business need 

did not go away to have a good case management system and to 

be able to manage law enforcement data. That IT project called 

Sentinel went the wrong way. 

If it is failing, you still need to meet that business need, and 

what you have to do is either stop the work, which we stopped the 

work that was happening on that and redirected it, brought it back 

into smaller pieces, and then said, you have to move out and you 

have to have a go/no-go decision. And if it is not meeting the requirements, then you cannot fully implement it and you cannot 

keep throwing money at it. 

Senator COBURN. Yes. 

Ms. EVANS. And so that gets to the project management portion 

of this and the requirements associated with it, is that those requirements have to be clearly understood, because you are still always going to have that business need. It is how you go about implementing and achieving that need. 
32 

Senator COBURN. Dan, your testimony highlighted seven critical 

success factors in IT management. Where, in your estimate, has 

the Federal Government fallen short, in order, of those seven 

things? Where do you see us not up to par? 

Mr. CHENOK. So, I think there are elements of each of the factors 

where there are successes, but there are also areas where there is 

progress to be made. 

One of the points that we make in the report and that I spoke 

about in my written testimony is that it is not as though there are 

seven independent factors. 

Senator COBURN. Yes, they are all interrelated. 

Mr. CHENOK. These are interrelated and they are elements of 

strong management. And I think you heard in the first panel about 

some of the approaches to how to approach strong management. 

The other thing I would point out is that the question that you 

asked about what can Congress and what can this Committee do 

is to highlight that importance through oversight, as you are doing 

today, and also look at opportunities where there are—I think it 

was Administrator Tangherlini who talked about multiple laws and 

rules that are basically having agencies focus more on compliance 

than on how to essentially bring good management to achieve mission outcomes. 

Senator COBURN. Yes. 

Mr. CHENOK. And so, focusing on that, looking at those interconnections where there might be areas to clarify is something that 

I think Congress can do, as well. 

Senator COBURN. You saw Steve testified about how he put a 

package together. Here is the acquisition—if you want to do this, 

here are the acquisition rules. Here are the compliance rules. In 

other words, they are building some of the packet to give reference 

to some of the people in the different agencies that want to do that, 

and I think that is a positive step. Would you concur? 

Mr. CHENOK. Yes, I would agree with that. I think that the 

TechFAR, as Steve referred to it, also resulted from some of those 

consultations that Steve did with our association, ACT–IAC, as 

well as some other industry associations, and it is really an advancement on the Mythbusters program that the administration 

initiated, and it will lead, I think, to the identification of some requirements in the the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), that 

could be reformed to provide for more agile and more incremental 

development. 

Senator COBURN. Yes. Give me your assessment on what you see 

in private industry on how IT is managed and what you see in the 

government. Note my critical note of some big businesses, because 

they wrestle with this when they are out purchasing IT, as well, 

in terms of costs and completion dates and functionality. Contrast 

that for me for a minute. 

Mr. CHENOK. So, as an association that has both government and 

industry members, I think we have a lot of experience looking 

across the two sectors. And, I think one thing in industry—we 

talked before, and I think it was mentioned by Steve VanRoekel, 

and Karen repeated this—the funding cycle is much shorter, so 

that in industry, when you have an issue that comes up, and there 
33 

are issues that come up multiple times in any large IT, complex IT 

migration, whether it is government or industry—— 

Senator COBURN. Right. 

Mr. CHENOK [continuing]. You have the ability to more quickly 

pivot through providing resources. And in industry, it is often on 

a quarterly type of consideration, even more quickly than a yearly 

consideration, as management teams look to manage their assets 

looking across their enterprise. 

It is more of a challenge for government leaders, whether they 

are Chief Information Officers, budget officials, or program officials 

looking to correct problems, to say, all right, we see a problem. We 

are going to redirect resources. We are going to use a flexible funding arrangement with accountability and transparency to our 

stakeholders and to oversight organizations, including the Congress 

and GAO, to make those changes. 

And I think that is one area where, again, if there are opportunities to examine where working with authorizers and the appropriations process, where there are reforms that could be brought, it is 

bringing government spending for technology more in line with 

that industry best practice through flexible funding arrangements. 

Things like working capital funds or franchise funds, which do 

exist in government, but they are not pervasive, and to some extent—— 

Senator COBURN. They are not utilized much in IT. 

Mr. CHENOK. Right. To some extent, I think that there needs to 

be more transparency about results in those settings. So, that is 

one area that I would draw as a significant contrast. 

Senator COBURN. Of all the billions that we have wasted in IT, 

not once have I ever found where we went after the supplier for 

non-performance, which begs the question, did we know what we 

wanted? If, in fact, we knew what we wanted and somebody did not 

supply it, we have a basis for contract non-performance, and yet I 

have never seen that happen once. Any comments on that? Karen. 

Ms. EVANS. So, in my experience, as you know, I have been an 

operational CIO, and this is where I allude to this in my testimony, 

about good decisions and bad decisions need to inform the process. 

So, in my experience, if you are clear about your requirements, you 

can use those tools. There are tools. The acquisition rules allow for 

those tools to be there. 

There are things that I have done in my experience where there 

was clear non-performance, and so, therefore, when an option year 

comes up—and contracts are done this way—that you do not exercise the option year, and that usually sends huge ripple effects. 

And so those are things that the government does do, but you do 

not necessarily hear about, that they do not exercise the option 

years on those contracts. The biggest part is making sure that the 

way that you write the contracts, so in this acquisition, as we talk 

about acquisition best practices, is that the way that you transition 

out from one contractor to another, that you actually think about 

the possibility that the contractor would have non-performance. 

Senator COBURN. Well, but that is my point. 

Ms. EVANS. Right. 
34 

Senator COBURN. Your tool is not exercising the option for them 

to continue to non-perform, and my question is about non-performance and them paying the government for non-performance. 

Ms. EVANS. Well, and that has happened, and actually on the 

Sentinel project itself, although we did not highlight a lot of this, 

that is—and these contracts were done through GSA, and so this 

is where GSA is great because of the way that the contracts are 

set up—that that was documented as non-performance on the contractor’s part. They did try to argue back and forth that the FBI 

did not know its requirements and loosey-goosey—— 

Senator COBURN. Yes. 

Ms. EVANS. And there was a certain amount of that, OK, and 

there was also the finger pointing between the two contractors saying, you were supposed to do this and you were supposed to do 

that. But GSA stepped in on that particular effort, and because of 

the way the FBI had contracted for that service, they could exercise 

certain things and they did not accept deliverables. And then those 

contractors also gave money back to the government and also 

agreed, in order to be able to go forward, that they would only do 

certain cents on the dollar until the project was back on track. 

So, there are tools that are available to the government. When 

you asked, did we use our authorities in partnership with GSA in 

order to move the contract—— 

Senator COBURN. Do you think that happens often enough? 

Ms. EVANS. I do not think it happens as much as you would like 

for it to happen, sir. 

Senator COBURN. Sort of like incremental development, I 

mean—— 

Ms. EVANS. Yes. 

Senator COBURN [continuing]. If, in fact, you get there and if you 

have not met the milestone, where do you go next? 

Ms. EVANS. And you have to say, no, that you do not go. The 

other issues that happen a lot of times, and this happens in the 

government, not so much in industry, is that a government will 

launch a pilot, and—— 

Senator COBURN. Yes. They never die. 

Ms. EVANS [continuing]. And they never die. So, during our tenure and OMB’s oversight, what we attempted to do was call them, 

like, initial operating capabilities and really looked to see if it was 

really meeting the need to do it and then see if you could build off 

of it. But, there were pilots that we had to shut down because it 

cost too much to maintain the pilot while you were doing the other 

projects, so you would have to shut down the pilots, and those were 

really difficult, because the group who volunteers up front is the 

one who says, well, I am really using this now for business needs, 

so where do I go, because I shut down this other effort that I was 

doing manually. 

So, when you start looking at what industry does well, where 

government could improve, is industry really looks at the same 

metrics that we ask for, the earned value, management data, cost 

schedule, and performance. They look at that data. Their organization is very sensitive to the variances because it affects the dollar 

amounts in the profitability of a company. 

Senator COBURN. And the bonus. 
35 

Ms. EVANS. Well, and the bonus, absolutely, right, because they 

get performance bonuses. So, they respond to the sensitivity a lot 

faster and so they will fail faster. I mean, if that is really what we 

want to talk about, they will fail fast, learn from that, do a course 

correction, and then hit on success. So, even when they have big 

failures in industry, it is not at the same cost level as ours because 

we tolerate a longer time. The government will tolerate a longer 

time because they want to get to that success. 

Senator COBURN. OK. Dan. 

Mr. CHENOK. One of the things that makes it difficult in government, per your question earlier, Dr. Coburn, is that the aligned incentives are not consistent across the stakeholder groups, and we 

talk about this a little bit in our paper. But, the acquisition process 

does not necessarily make it clear, what are the performance 

standards that the contractor should provide and achieve that are 

related to the mission elements of the program. 

For example, in the GPRA Modernization Amendments, the strategic agency goals and priorities are not necessarily linked to the 

performance of the IT organization and they are not necessarily 

translated to the contract that then provides the incentives for the 

company to produce. And so that is where you get some of this disconnect, where it is hard to react in a manner that you are describing, to basically understand, what are the successes that can be rewarded for good performance with a contractor and where are there 

problems that need to be corrected quickly. And that is why we 

talk about aligning incentives as one of the key elements of the 

framework. 

Senator COBURN. One of the things you cited in your testimony 

was the necessity of having a skilled program manager and a 

skilled team. Turnover of project managers is a big problem within 

the Federal agencies. How do we address that? 

Mr. CHENOK. So, it is—and I spent a long career in the government. I had the good fortune at the end of my time as the OMB 

Senior Career Official for IT Policy to work with Karen at the beginning of her tenure as the Administrator. And I saw both great 

examples in government of long-tenured, very successful program 

managers and, as you say, elements where project managers were 

either not in sufficient quantity or skill or switched out quickly. 

I think some of the reforms that OPM is now engaged in, in 

terms of bringing in people more quickly and through authorities 

like direct hire, as well as improving the training process for program managers so that very talented Federal employees can understand what it is to incorporate things like the GAO Critical Success 

Factors or the 7–S for Success elements into their management 

structure, helps them to understand the point that we made earlier. 

Most government employees, and especially government managers who have been with agencies for a long time, are passionate 

about the mission of the programs that they implement and the 

key is to help them understand how good management can support 

better outcomes for that mission. That can be a powerful enabler 

to encourage Federal leaders to stay and carry through on their responsibilities. 

Senator COBURN. I see some of that in Steve. Do you agree? 
36 

Mr. CHENOK. I would. I have had the good fortune of working 

with Steve over a number of years, both when he was with an 

agency, the Federal Communications Commission, and with OMB, 

and I think that he is doing an excellent job through the program 

that he laid out today in creating that foundation for improvement. 

Senator COBURN. OK. One of the things, it seems to me, is if you 

have a really skilled manager with really capable leadership but 

you do not empower them to actually manage and lead, they are 

not going to succeed. So, in your mind, both Karen and you, Dan, 

how is the role of CIO in the Federal Government different from 

CIOs in private industry? 

Mr. CHENOK. So, let me actually talk about Karen for a moment. 

I worked with Karen when she was a CIO, both at the Justice Department at a bureau level and at the Energy Department, and 

then when Karen was the Vice Chair of the Federal CIO Council. 

And in all three roles—the authorities differed, and that is true for 

other CIOs that I worked with in government then and it is true 

today—Karen was able to bring forward some of the best practices 

that she has spoken about here in those different roles. And I think 

a private sector CIO would also bring in those types of integrating 

technology quickly, doing significant program reviews with a 

project team, linking those program reviews to outcomes. Those are 

some of the similarities of strong CIOs in government and industry, and that is hard to legislate per se. I think you can clarify authorities, whether that is in legislation or through oversight and 

through understanding and expectation. 

But, I will come back to the first ‘‘S’’ in our framework. In industry, you have a strong governance team, a C suite team, who pulls 

together as a mission team the CIO and other leaders to say, how 

are we going to deliver our product or service to make revenue this 

quarter, increase our customer service expectation, et cetera, and 

really drive to those mission goals and objectives. And in government, CIOs are often more focused around compliance because of 

the many different rules and laws that we spoke about earlier, and 

it is harder. Good CIOs will find a way to leverage those laws and 

rules. Sometimes, it can become overwhelming. 

And it is not to say that there are not laws and rules that exist 

in companies, because there are regulations that companies follow, 

as well, things like Sarbanes-Oxley and Gramm-Leach-Bliley, for 

example, in the financial services industry. But, again, they are 

built into a risk program, and that is—the last thought I will have 

here is that CIOs in industry will often understand the balance between risks that an agency faces from a technology infrastructure 

and the benefits that they can implement through technology, and 

so they can balance those risks against the benefits and move forward. That is a harder conversation to have in government because 

risks tend to get magnified quickly and it is harder to react quickly. 

Ms. EVANS. So, I think we are at the point where you are starting to see a lot of evolution about information technology, and you 

are really seeing this play out—should I say this—in the Target 

situation, all right, because through the point that Dan is saying 

with risk, CIOs, if they are operational in focus, will never be able 

to rise to the board room, will never come in—and I see it now, be-
37 

cause I sit on several boards—the CIOs are not part of the senior 

leadership team that are briefing about what is happening within 

an organization. 

They are moving more toward the risk model because information technology is an enabler. So, they are providing services, and 

whether they are providing Internet online services, you see risk, 

cybersecurity, all those types of things, threat, all that is rolling up 

now through what is, like, the audit committee, because they look 

at the risk profile for the company. 

Now, either the CIO can jump in there and say, this is how we 

are doing things and this is how we are managing it and then they 

do what I had outlined here, where they talk about this is the impact that it will have on the business if we do not do X, Y, and 

Z. That is, in OPM-speak or senior executive-speak, it is business 

acumen, right. It is either the CIO has business acumen and can 

translate what the technology risk implications are to the business 

of that agency, and either we have CIOs that have the business 

acumen to be able to do that or we have CIOs that are very technology operational focused and they will not be viewed as that strategic partner. 

And so you are seeing that evolution. Industry recognizes that 

they need it. They know they need innovation, so they started laying out Chief Innovation Officers. They know they have to have 

risk, so they have a Chief Risk Officer. They know they need to 

manage information from a strategic standpoint, so they have a 

Chief Strategist. 

All of those were envisioned, if you look back at Clinger-Cohen, 

Senator Cohen’s initial vision, that is what a CIO was supposed to 

do, the strategic management of information to enable mission outcomes. And that is also what was supposed to happen in private 

industry. But, because of the way the environment is, either they 

step up to the bat and they can do it or business is going to compensate for it because it is a need that needs to be addressed. 

Senator COBURN. OK. Thank you. 

Chairman CARPER. [Presiding.] Dr. Coburn, thanks. 

I want to go back to the first panel for a little bit. They are not 

here anymore, so they will not know what you are saying. But, just 

go back and think about their testimony, some things that you especially agreed with, maybe some things you have questions about, 

and just share both of those. Where you have strong agreement, it 

would be helpful for us to know that. Maybe some questioning 

would be helpful, as well. 

Mr. CHENOK. So, again, the relationship, I think, but one thing 

we heard that was common was the relationship across multiple 

functions in an agency; that good IT management involves mission 

leaders, CFOs, Chief Acquisition Officers and creating a governance framework. The first of the ‘‘S’’s in our model that works 

across these entities I think is important, and I think you heard 

that from the panel. 

I think that some of the solutions and recommendations that 

were discussed that OMB is laying out, that Steve VanRoekel laid 

out in his testimony, will provide some of the infrastructure to be 

able to move more quickly. 
38 

One of the things that we talked about with Dr. Coburn was 

aligning the funding processes in government to match that need 

for speed such that it is not a 30-month delay and you have to 

build in response to something that is happening this year into 

your budget plans that then go and get appropriated 2 years later 

when September of the fiscal year comes around, that we create 

flexible funding mechanisms to allow faster response through a 

technology infrastructure. And I think that is something that certainly the industry, ACT–IAC, would welcome the opportunity to 

work with the Committee and Congress to move forward on. 

Chairman CARPER. OK. Thanks. Ms. Evans. 

Ms. EVANS. So, what I agree with is the way that Steve laid out 

PortfolioStat and the way to move forward with PortfolioStat. And 

if you look at what he said and then look up at the success factors, 

what he is really doing is building and integrating the management framework that would allow for the success of programs 

through the use of technology. So, he is talking about performance 

indicators, bringing in the key stakeholders, then asking for that 

on a quarterly basis and really looking at what are the mission outcomes that you are trying to achieve and put the parameters 

around it. But looking at the agency as a whole, or looking at the 

department as a whole, because if you have to make tradeoffs, you 

cannot do that within one project. The agency leadership is going 

to have to look at the portfolio across the board and how is it performing across the board, or do you have to, like, stop something 

because this other one is more important and it is taking more resources than you had anticipated. 

So, I think the way to move forward, the way that he has performance indicators, that is the way that is going to institutionalize 

the success that you need or allow for the failures that are happening to be corrected in that framework. So, that is a great thing. 

The other part that I think we need to really still stay focused 

on is that there are activities that are happening now that need to 

catch up to what he is building institutionalized, and you cannot 

lose sight of those activities, like the data center consolidation, or 

several of the cross-agency performance goals that they have related to cyber or workforce issues. Because if those things are 

launched and what you want to try to do is change them in midstream so that they can then get on this same path of the 

PortfolioStat in order to achieve the results. And that part, I think, 

needs to really be looked at from an oversight perspective, of how 

are you going to transition these existing things that are happening into a PortfolioStat environment. 

Chairman CARPER. OK. Good. One of the questions I asked of— 

in fact, a couple of questions of the earlier panel dealt with what 

is the appropriate role for us in the Legislative Branch to move this 

along and to get a better result maybe for less money. We try to 

do oversight. We try to do good oversight, not ‘‘gotcha’’ oversight, 

but constructive oversight, and, Karen, you have been before us 

enough to know that that is really the way we operate here. 

Whether Tom is the Chairman or I am the Chairman, that is our 

attitude. 

We have this legislation reported out of the House, FITARA, with 

bipartisan support. We are going to try to get it hotlined and 
39 

passed by unanimous consent, our data center legislation that Dr. 

Coburn and I and others have worked on here in the Senate and 

see if we cannot move that. I understand a piece of FITARA, the 

House bill, actually focuses on data center. 

Just talk to us, if you would, about—again, similar to the question I asked the first panel—what is our responsibility? What is 

our opportunity on the legislative side? What are some things we 

ought to be doing in terms of legislation? What are some things we 

ought not to be doing? 

Ms. EVANS. So, in my testimony, I did outline some of those 

things, and I do realize that there are a lot of good pieces of 

FITARA that I think really should go forward, like the data center 

consolidation. They have the Center for Innovation. There are additional things that I think if you—— 

Chairman CARPER. What are some other pieces besides the data 

center in FITARA—— 

Ms. EVANS. Well, they have—— 

Chairman CARPER [continuing]. That you think should go forward, maybe with some modification, but should go forward? 

Ms. EVANS. And they have things in there dealing with the Innovation Center, which is very similar in line to things that GSA has 

talked about with the 18F, as well as what Steve has talked about 

with the Digital Services. So, you could combine those three ideas 

together, which would get to what I believe you and Senator 

Coburn had put together a long time ago, which was also the ability for OMB, from an oversight and proactive approach, to be able 

to go in and help agencies fix things, right the ship before it goes 

too far astream, and also create some of the innovation that you 

need for these seed projects so it can then go out. You create it once 

and it can be used by many agencies over and over again. So, those 

concepts are already being deployed by the administration and are 

also included in the legislation. 

There are some other things, though, where the legislation is 

specifically looking at the CIO and things like the budget authority 

that could be tweaked. For example, I outlined that maybe one of 

the things, when they are talking about personnel issues and that 

all component CIOs should be reporting to the CIO at the department, that program managers in component organizations should 

also be part of the CIO organization, because then you bring that 

expertise of how to implement the system in conjunction with a 

program executive. 

And so those, if you put a little bit more detail, and I am usually 

not one to say, put more detail in there and give agencies flexibility, but if you kind of spelled out those two roles in the legislation, that would get to a lot of this commitment of the stakeholders, 

the collaborative governance that you need, because you are specifically saying the program manager belongs to an IT function, so 

that is the implement, and the program executive belongs to the 

program function, which allows the integration of those two things 

together. And you could input that into the legislation and that 

would get to several of these pieces that are in the governance 

structure that both GAO and IAC and everyone has recognized 

that needs to be done. 
40 

And then the other part that I am suggesting is that through the 

Exhibit 300 process or through reporting process when it is asking 

for reports, is that there is a program manager. If a program manager is put in charge of a project, we used to, we say that they have 

to have the skills. If you look at the Exhibit 300 right now, it is 

not there, because I actually printed one off to make sure I was 

right before I came. But, you need to see who that is from an oversight perspective, and you need to know, in essence, what their resume is. Did they manage to completion a project of this nature? 

And if they did not, then do they have the adequate training and 

the certification so that they can? 

And some of those types of things, you could get visibility down 

into it, which would then at least put the project on a path that 

would show that it at least would get success from that perspective. 

Chairman CARPER. OK. Good. Thanks so much. 

Mr. Chenok, do you agree with anything that Karen has said? 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. CHENOK. I do, Senator Carper. 

Chairman CARPER. Oh, good. 

Mr. CHENOK. I think Karen raises excellent points. I would note 

that, with regard to specific legislation, the Industry Advisory 

Council is a non-lobby—— 

Chairman CARPER. I understand. 

Mr. CHENOK [continuing]. So we do not officially take positions 

on legislation. With regard to—— 

Chairman CARPER. I understand that. What she said was helpful 

in terms of these are the provisions that we think are really worthy, should be pretty much—— 

Mr. CHENOK. Right. I think—— 

Chairman CARPER [continuing]. And here are a couple that 

should be tweaked, so that is very helpful. I find these are not really—a lot of stuff around here, we just get bogged down forever. 

They are partisan issues. This is one that should not be very partisan. Nobody wants to waste money. We all want to get better results. So, just with that in mind, go ahead. 

Mr. CHENOK. So, I do think that there are a number of elements 

that this Committee and Congress can do to promote the goals that 

you are espousing in this hearing. 

One is, as you talked about, constructive oversight, and that is 

highlighting both successes and issues to be addressed and understanding that agencies do take risks, just as companies take risks, 

in implementing programs. The world is not a riskless world. So, 

helping to have a conversation that is a more mature conversation 

about how agencies can proceed in implementing programs where 

things will not always be perfect, but the larger goal of serving citizens, just like when a company has the larger goal of serving customers, it makes it worth taking those risks, and there is an accountability structure. So, providing oversight on that balance, I 

think, is an important role that this Committee can take. 

In addition, I think that the funding alignment issue is something that authorizers and appropriators, as you heard Steve 

VanRoekel talk about earlier, can review. The budget process 

now—and having had a career at OMB, I was all too familiar with 

this—does work where the planning occurs 2 years or more before 
41 

spending occurs, and so it is much harder to pivot in response. 

Through legislation, through expanding authorities for things like 

franchise funds and working capital funds, I think there is an interesting way to look at those as pilot elements. As I said, they do 

exist in places in government, but in other places require additional authorization to implement. 

The last point I would make is, from my experience working on 

the E-Government Act of 2002, when I was at OMB as a staffer 

working with staff from this Committee, that statute did not necessarily legislate in new areas, but it did state Congress’s—it did, 

in a number of cases, actually introduce new provisions and, of 

course, created the office that Karen headed and that Steve 

VanRoekel heads now. It also reinforced some of the productive and 

instructive activities that were going on in government and ensured that those activities were recognized as things that Congress 

endorsed, which supported agencies to expand those productive activities that were going on at the time, whether they were things 

like expanding digital signatures, expanding the use of portals as 

mechanisms to look into agencies to get better services, or other 

elements that that Act pointed out. 

Chairman CARPER. All right. Thank you. 

A different kind of question, if I could, Ms. Evans, for you. As 

you know, cybersecurity is a very important issue. It continues to 

be. It is going to be with us for a long time, I fear. You serve as 

the National Director for the U.S. Cyber Challenge. I was hoping 

that you could tell us a little bit about how cybersecurity and IT 

management are linked and maybe share with us any advice you 

might have on that matter, that linkage. 

Ms. EVANS. So, from the inception of the projects, whenever you 

do this, you always need to be assessing, what is the risk associated with that service that you are getting ready to provide? Again, 

this is another area that is really being looked at. Should the Chief 

Information Security Officer be pulled out from the CIO organization? Should they be equal? Should they be separate? I personally 

believe that they need to be integrated, because it is about managing the information, and it also needs to be integrated into the 

budget process so that it is specifically resourced in order to be able 

to do it. 

But, to Dan’s point, the discussion that has to happen is how 

much risk is an agency willing to live with. The best example that 

I can give that is relevant to this Committee is when we had an 

IT failure in the Census program. Remember that project? 

Chairman CARPER. I do remember that. 

Ms. EVANS. Yes, I figured you did. And one of the ways—— 

Chairman CARPER. I live a hundred more years—— 

Ms. EVANS. Yes, and we have 10 years now. OK. But, part of 

what was also happening in that environment was a cybersecurity 

incident, and a recurring incident within the Department of Commerce. And so you had to look at, were you really going to fix the 

IT project? How did you balance this cybersecurity problem that 

they had with exfiltration of data? They had this failure that was 

happening with IT. And, what was really the goal? The goal was 

to have quality data so that we could really rely upon that in order 

to be able to make decisions about representation for the Nation. 
42 

So, that is how the plan was then structured, to come back and 

say, the best way for us to rely on the data is to go back to a big 

portion of this being manual, because we do not know what is happening on our networks. If we went to a data collection that was 

online, we would not be able to really certify that this data has not 

been touched or messed with in any way. 

That has to happen on every program, that type of analysis as 

we go forward, whether you are collecting personally identifiable 

information, what types of services you move online, how you do 

that, and then how are you going to validate the individuals to assure that they actually did what you needed them to do in that program. That has to be comprehensive, and IT is a solution that provides for that and enables that, but it is really a risk management 

of services that a Secretary has to decide, what level am I really 

willing to live with. And they may decide that IT may not necessarily be the way to go because the cyber risk is too high for online services. 

Chairman CARPER. OK. We have our third vote underway, and 

Dr. Coburn, I think, was going to vote in the second and third vote. 

Let me see, it started at 12:05 and it is about 12:10, so we are 5 

minutes into a 15-minute vote, so that helps me keep it straight. 

I will ask you one more question—I guess this would be more for 

Mr. Chenok—if I could. The framework that the IAC released today 

stresses the importance of getting good people involved in government IT projects to hopefully ensure their success. Could you just 

discuss with us for a couple of minutes what you believe are the 

biggest challenges that our government faces in getting the right 

people into these positions and keeping them there and any recommendations you might have to address those challenges. 

Mr. CHENOK. So, it is an interesting question, especially in an 

era when my children, for example, use IT and think about it as 

second nature to the work that they do, and—— 

Chairman CARPER. How old are your kids? Do not tell me they 

are three and four. 

Mr. CHENOK. They are school-age. 

Chairman CARPER. OK. 

Mr. CHENOK. So, they use it for school. But, when they enter the 

workforce and the newest generation of Federal employees who will 

become the leaders of tomorrow use technology, they do not think 

about it necessarily as, ‘‘I am going to be a technology worker,’’ or 

‘‘I am going to be a Federal worker.’’ They think about it as, ‘‘I am 

going to work because I am passionate about government service 

and technology is a key lever and it is almost second nature to how 

I do my work.’’ 

And if we think about, from a workforce perspective, channeling 

that approach and encouraging workers at all levels of seniority in 

their Federal career to think about technology, as we talked about 

earlier, not as a separate sort of compliance activity, but as something that, if done properly, is integrally related to achieving the 

mission outcomes that so many Federal employees are passionate 

about, I think it will get people excited about doing the hard work 

of understanding what it takes to manage programs well, because 

it does take work. Implementing frameworks like the 7–S Framework or the GAO Success Factors or those that Karen rec-
43 

ommended in her testimony, it takes time. It does not come naturally, either in government or industry. 

So, I think part of the challenge is, as you heard from the first 

panel, bringing in terrific people, bringing in the best people from 

industry, currently working with government, from new entrants 

into the government space. And part of the challenge is helping 

current Federal employees understand that technology is an enabler to helping them achieve and contribute to their mission to 

serve citizens. And taken from that perspective, technology becomes an exciting part of, I think, a Federal employee’s career development, and it is not just about the CIO or their immediate 

staff, but it is the program and mission staff who are leveraging 

that to achieve results, just like the best companies are using technology to achieve results. 

Chairman CARPER. Good. I think we will call a halt there. If I 

leave in 1 minute, I can probably make this third vote and keep 

my perfect attendance record. Well, it is not quite perfect, but it 

is not bad. 

I want to really thank you both. It is great to see you, and thank 

you for all you do for us and have done for our country. Some day, 

I would just love it if we held a hearing and the private sector 

shows up on these IT projects and says, we could really learn a lot 

from the government and maybe we could mentor them, or school 

them. We learn a lot from them, and hopefully, we are learning a 

lot from one another now. But, I am encouraged that we are on the 

right track. We still know we have a lot to do, a lot of ways we 

can do better, and with your help, we will. 

In the meantime, Dr. Coburn and I and our colleagues, our staff, 

want to make sure that we stay attuned, tuned in, interested, and 

providing the kind of oversight that is constructive to get us to 

where we need to go. 

The hearing record is going to remain open for 15 days—that is 

until May 23 at 5 p.m.—for the submission of statements and questions for the record. I expect we will have some. If you receive 

those, if you could respond to them promptly, we would be most 

grateful. 

Again, our thanks to you both. Good to see you, and take care. 

Thanks so much. 

Mr. CHENOK. Thank you. 

Ms. EVANS. Thank you. 

Chairman CARPER. This hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

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Æ