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 realized from IT. Too often, federal IT projects run over budget, behind 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. OMB uses the following mechanisms to help it fulfill 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 chief information officer (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. The CIO also has the ability to provide written comments regarding the status of each investment. 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). 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 and 3 other agencies. 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 OMB’s oversight mechanisms, the federal government spends billions of dollars on poorly performing IT investments, as the following examples illustrate: 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 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. 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. 1.) GAO, Border Security: Preliminary Observations on the Status of Key Southwest Border Technology Programs, GAO-11-448T (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 15, 2011). GAO, OPM Retirement Modernization: Longstanding Information Technology Management Weaknesses Need to Be Addressed, GAO-12-226T (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 15, 2011). The approximately 800 major IT investments total about $40.6 billion for fiscal year 2011. 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. 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. Since the fiscal year 2004 budget cycle, OMB has required agencies to categorize their IT investments in their annual exhibit 53s according to primary function and sub-function. In their fiscal year 2011 submissions, agencies reported the greatest number of IT investments in Information and Technology Management (1,536 investments), followed by Supply Chain Management (777 investments), and Human Resource Management (622 investments). Similarly, planned expenditures on investments were greatest in Information and Technology Management, at about $35.5 billion. Figure 2 depicts, by primary function, the total number of investments within the 27 federal agencies that report to the IT Dashboard. Additionally, agencies were required to choose a sub-function for each investment related to the primary function. During the past several years, we have issued multiple reports and testimonies and made numerous recommendations to OMB and federal agencies to identify and reduce duplication within the federal government’s portfolio of IT investments. In March 2011, we reported an overview of federal programs and functional areas where unnecessary duplication, overlap, or fragmentation existed. agencies, offices, or initiatives had similar or overlapping objectives or provided similar services to the same populations, or where government missions were fragmented across multiple agencies or programs. The report touched on hundreds of federal programs, including IT programs, affecting virtually all major federal departments and agencies. GAO-11-318SP. Consolidation Initiative to guide federal agencies in consolidating data centers. Specifically, OMB and agencies plan to close more than 950 of the over 2,100 federal data centers by 2015. As of November 2011, agencies reported that a total of 149 data centers have been closed across the federal government. For example, 16 DOD data centers, 3 DOE centers, and 7 DHS centers have been closed. In September 2011, we reported that limitations in OMB’s guidance hindered efforts to identify IT duplication. Specifically, OMB guidance stated that each IT investment needs to be mapped to a single functional category within the FEA to allow for the identification and analysis of potentially duplicative investments across agencies. We noted that this limits OMB’s ability to identify potentially duplicative investments both within and across agencies because similar investments may be organized under different functions. Accordingly, we recommended that OMB revise guidance to federal agencies on categorizing IT investments to ensure that the categorizations are clear and that it allow agencies to choose secondary categories, where applicable. OMB officials generally agreed with this recommendation and stated that they plan to update the FEA reference models to provide additional clarity on how agencies should characterize investments in order to enhance the identification of potentially duplicative investments. We also reported that results of OMB initiatives to identify potentially duplicative investments were mixed and that several federal agencies did not routinely assess their entire IT portfolios to identify and remove or consolidate duplicative systems. Specifically, we said that most of OMB’s recent initiatives have not yet demonstrated results, and several agencies did not routinely assess legacy systems to determine if they are duplicative. As a result, we recommended that OMB require federal agencies to report the steps they take to ensure that their IT investments are not duplicative as part of their annual budget and IT investment submissions. OMB generally agreed with this recommendation. Although the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security utilize various processes to prevent and reduce investment in duplicative programs and systems, potentially duplicative IT investments exist. Further complicating agencies’ ability to identify and address duplicative investments is miscategorization of investments within agencies. Each of the agencies has recently initiated plans to address many of these investments. DHS’s efforts have resulted in the identification and elimination of duplication, but DOD’s and DOE’s initiatives have not yet led to the elimination or consolidation of duplicative investments or functionality.