Information technology should enable government to better serve the American people. However, according to OMB, despite spending more than $600 billion on IT over the past decade, the federal government has achieved little of the productivity improvements that private industry has Too often, federal IT projects run over budget, behind realized from IT.schedule, or fail to deliver promised functionality. In combating this problem, proper oversight is critical. Both OMB and federal agencies have key roles and responsibilities for overseeing IT investment management. OMB is responsible for working with agencies to ensure investments are appropriately planned and justified. Additionally, each year, OMB and federal agencies work together to determine how much the government plans to spend on IT projects and how these funds are to be allocated. Congress enacted several laws to assist the federal government in better managing IT investments. The three key laws are the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996, and the E-Government Act of 2002: The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 specified OMB and agency responsibilities for managing information resources, including the management of IT. Among its provisions, this law established agency responsibility for assessing and managing the risks of major information systems initiatives.and oversee policies, principles, standards, and guidelines for federal agency IT functions, including periodic evaluations of major information systems. It also required that OMB develop The Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 placed responsibility for managing investments with the heads of agencies and established chief information officers (CIO) to advise and assist agency heads in carrying out this responsibility. Additionally, this law required OMB to establish processes to analyze, track, and evaluate the risks and results of major capital investments in information systems made by federal agencies and report to Congress on the net program performance benefits achieved as a result of these investments. The E-Government Act of 2002 established a federal e-government initiative, which encouraged the use of web-based Internet applications to enhance the access to and delivery of government information and service to citizens, to business partners, to employees, and among agencies at all levels of government. The act also required OMB to report annually to Congress on the status of e- government initiatives. In these reports, OMB is to describe the administration’s use of e-government principles to improve government performance and the delivery of information and services to the public. OMB uses the following mechanisms to help it fulfill its required oversight responsibilities of federal IT spending during the annual budget formulation process. OMB requires 27 federal departments and agencies to provide information related to their IT investments, including agency IT investment portfolios (called exhibit 53s) and capital asset plans and business cases (called exhibit 300s). In June 2009, OMB publicly deployed the IT Dashboard, which is intended to display near real-time information on the cost, schedule, and performance of all major IT investments. For each major investment, the Dashboard provides performance ratings on cost and schedule, a CIO evaluation, and an overall rating. The CIO evaluation is based on his or her evaluation of the performance of each investment and takes into consideration multiple variables. This evaluation is to be updated when new information becomes available that would affect the assessment of a given investment. The CIO also has the ability to provide written comments regarding the status of each investment. The Dashboard replaced OMB’s Management Watch List and High-Risk List, which were previously used to highlight poorly planned or poorly performing investments on a quarterly basis. As of August 2011, the Dashboard displayed information on the cost, schedule, and performance of 797 major federal IT investments at 27 federal agencies. According to OMB, the public display of investment data on the IT Dashboard is intended to allow OMB, other oversight bodies, and the general public to hold government agencies accountable for results and progress. In addition, the Dashboard allows users to download exhibit 53 data, which provide details on the more than 7,200 federal IT investments (totaling $78.8 billion in planned spending for fiscal year 2011). Figure 1 shows the number of IT investments and planned spending by federal agency. As we have previously reported, while the IT Dashboard provides IT investment information for 27 federal agencies, it does not include any information about 61 other agencies’ investments. Specifically, it does not include information from 58 independent executive branch agencies (such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Communications Commission) and 3 other agencies (such as the Legal Services Corporation). It also does not include information from the legislative or judicial branch agencies. Accordingly, we recommended that OMB specify which executive branch agencies are included when discussing the annual federal IT investment portfolio. OMB disagreed with this recommendation, stating that the agencies included in the federal IT portfolio are already identified in OMB guidance and on the IT Dashboard. However, we maintained that the recommendation had not been fully addressed because OMB officials frequently refer to the federal IT portfolio without clarifying that it does not include all agencies. Despite required roles and responsibilities and OMB’s oversight mechanisms, the federal government spends billions of dollars on poorly performing IT investments, as the following examples illustrate: In April 2008, due to problems identified during testing and cost overruns and schedule slippages, the Secretary of Commerce announced a redesign of the 2010 Census, resulting in a $205 million increase in life-cycle costs. In February 2010, the Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System was canceled after 10 years of development and approximately $850 million spent, due, in part, to a lack of strategic alignment, governance, and requirements management, as well as the overall size and scope of the effort. In July 2010, OMB directed the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to halt development of its Electronic Records Archive system at the end of fiscal year 2011 (1 year earlier than planned). OMB cited concerns about the system’s cost, schedule, and performance and directed NARA to better define system functionality and improve strategic planning. Through fiscal year 2010, NARA had spent about $375 million on the system. In January 2011, the Secretary of Homeland Security ended the Secure Border Initiative Network program after spending about $1.5 billion because it did not meet cost-effectiveness and viability standards. In February 2011, the Office of Personnel Management canceled its Retirement Systems Modernization program, after several years of trying to improve the implementation of this investment.the Office of Personnel Management, it spent approximately $231 million on this investment. In March 2011, we reported that while DOD’s Navy Next Generation Enterprise Network investment’s first increment is estimated to cost $50 billion, the program was not well positioned to meet its cost and schedule estimates. As such, we recommended DOD limit further investment until it conducts an interim review to reconsider the selected acquisition approach and addresses its investment management issues. DOD stated that it did not concur with the recommendation to reconsider its acquisition approach, but we maintain that without doing so, DOD cannot be sure it is pursuing the most cost-effective approach. Additionally, as of August 2011, according to the IT Dashboard, 261 of the federal government’s approximately 800 major IT investments— totaling almost $18 billion—are in need of management attention (rated “yellow” to indicate the need for attention or “red” to indicate significant concerns). (See fig. 2.) In recognizing that wasteful spending continues to plague IT investment management, OMB has recently implemented additional efforts to address this problem. These efforts include the following: TechStat reviews. In January 2010, the Federal CIO began leading reviews—known as “TechStat” sessions—of selected IT investments involving OMB and agency leadership to increase accountability and transparency and improve performance. OMB officials stated that, as of December 2010, 58 sessions had been held and resulted in improvements to or termination of IT investments with performance problems. For example, the June 2010 TechStat session for NARA’s Electronic Records Archive investment (mentioned above) resulted in the halting of development funding pending the completion of a strategic plan. In addition, OMB has identified 26 additional high-priority IT projects and plans to develop corrective action plans with agencies at future TechStat sessions. According to the former Federal CIO, OMB’s efforts to improve management and oversight of IT investments have resulted in $3 billion in savings. IT reform. In December 2010, the Federal CIO issued a 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal Information Technology Management. This 18-month plan specified five major goals: strengthening program management, streamlining governance and improving accountability, increasing engagement with industry, aligning the acquisition and budget processes with the technology cycle, and applying “light technology” and shared solutions. As part of this plan, OMB outlined actions to, among other things, strengthen agencies’ investment review boards and consolidate federal data centers. The plan stated that OMB will work with Congress to consolidate commodity IT spending (e.g., e-mail, data centers, content management systems, and web infrastructure) under agency CIOs. Further, the plan called for the role of federal agency CIOs to focus more on IT portfolio management. In addition to these efforts to improve government spending on IT, avoiding unnecessary duplicative investments is critically important. In February 2002, OMB established the FEA initiative. According to OMB, the FEA is intended to facilitate governmentwide improvement through cross-agency analysis and identification of duplicative investments, gaps, and opportunities for collaboration, interoperability, and integration within and across agency programs. The FEA is composed of five “reference models” describing the federal government’s (1) business (or mission) processes and functions, independent of the agencies that perform them; (2) performance goals and outcome measures; (3) means of service delivery; (4) information and data definitions; and (5) technology standards.