By Emelie Rutherford
Four information-technology (IT) projects in the Pentagon and three in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are being reexamined as part of a White House effort to improve 26 high-priority, yet troubled, government computing efforts.
The Department of Defense efforts include the Air Force’s Expeditionary Combat Support System (ECSS) logistics program as well as personnel systems for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) disclosed yesterday the 26 vital government IT projects it determined could be overhauled to save money and be better implemented. The rocky projects, OMB said, are not being cancelled and changes to them will be unveiled next year in President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2012 budget proposal. The identification of the IT projects is part of the Obama administration’s larger drive to improve government efficiency.
“The programs we have identified are mission critical; we believe that their objective remains as important as ever,” Vivek Kundra, the federal government’s chief information officer (CIO), told reporters yesterday. “We want to speed up and simplify the execution of these programs. This isn’t about killing projects. It’s about making them work better and faster.”
Still, in the conference call, Kundra would not rule out the chance that the projects’ funding could be cut by the Obama administration.
“What we’re saying is, going through the process of looking at how these projects are performing, if, for example, these projects are not adding value or if there’s a game- changing approach to how these technologies are deployed, what we’re not going to do is continue to throw good money after bad money,” he said.
Computer Sciences Corp. [CSC] holds a contract for the Air Force’s ECSS, a protracted developmental effort to create an enterprise logistics tool. The effort, which is currently within its budget, was restructured earlier this year, according to the White House’s IT Dashboard Web site. The ECSS effort’s FY ’10 spending is $301.2 million.
OMB did not provide detailed information on the three other Pentagon IT efforts pegged as needing to be revamped: the Navy’s Future Pay and Personnel System, Army’s Integrated Pay and Personnel System, and the Air Force’s Integrated Pay and Personnel System. DoD is expected to make information on the three efforts available in September.
In DHS, the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) information portal, National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) Information Technology Systems and Services Program, and Automated Commercial Environment/International Trade Data System (ACE / ITDS) cargo-processing portal made the list of 26 IT projects.
Kundra plans to review improvement plans for the IT projects from September to November with federal agency CIOs including DoD’s David Wennergren and DHS’ Richard Spires. The plans will detail proposed improvements and changes to schedules and budgets.
Kundra worked this month with 27 federal government CIOs to craft the list of 26 projects across 15 agencies.
“These were selected based on the risk, the cost, the schedule, data from the IT Dashboard, but, more importantly, the deliberative process, the discussions we had with CIOs, with program managers across the federal government,” he said.
The 26 projects represent approximately $30 billion in lifecycle costs, he said.