Trade Group: Gov't IT Contracting Reform Needed

IDG News Service - The U.S. supervision should designate an eccentric auditor to guard every leading IT acquisition, in an bid to prevent unsuccessful projects, delays and cost overruns, a new inform from a tech traffic organisation recommends.

The TechAmerica Foundation's inform , expelled Monday, moreover calls on the U.S. supervision to emanate a module administration college and to publicize more incremental tech projects, instead of large-scale, multiyear implementations.

Federal IT constrictive remodel is indispensable since there have been as well many failures with leading implementations, mentioned the report, authored by a 31-person commission, inclusive member of Northrop Grumman ( NOC ), Microsoft ( MSFT ), IBM ( IBM ) and Hewlett-Packard ( HPQ ).

In August, the White House Office of Management and Budget voiced it was suspending 26 IT projects value about US$30 billion whilst it reviewed why they weren't working, and the Obama administration has "significant concerns" about 55 of 794 stream leading IT projects, according to the Federal IT Dashboard .

"The administration fairly sharp out that there is a poignant capability hole between supervision IT and IT opposite the rest of the in isolation sector," Phillip Bond, TechAmerica's boss and CEO, mentioned during a press conference. "That hole is important, given that over the past 10 years, the supervision has invested more than 600 billion taxpayer dollars in these IT systems."

Despite longtime problems with IT contracting, there's been "frustratingly small action" to put together the process, Bond said.

The assignment endorsed eccentric auditors as a way to rapidly pick out risks related with sovereign IT projects, mentioned Linda Gooden, assignment co-chair and senior manager clamp boss of Lockheed Martin's ( LMT ) Information Systems and Global Services division. "Most of us know innately that projects, quite large, intricate IT projects, have a high level of risk," she said. "But why isn't that danger well known early on, why isn't it identified and then, mitigations put in place?"

The inform recommends a "no-fear zone" where contractors could advance to supervision agencies and speak about problems without troubling about being penalized, she said.

Government agencies should moreover allocate module managers to considerable IT projects from the beginning, inclusive at the solicit for offer stage, the inform recommends. In a few cases, the TechAmerica assignment found supervision module managers in charge of 8 IT projects, mentioned Steve Kelman, assignment co-chair and a highbrow in Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government

That workload for module managers is "almost a guarantee" of problems, Kelman said.

The report, in its 33-point action plan, moreover recommends that high-level agency officials take tenure of IT projects, and that supervision agencies concentration on enhancing information and conspiring with IT contractors. Improved information was a tip regard voiced by IT vendors the assignment interviewed, the inform said.

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