GAO has said that federal agencies have fully carried out less than half of the hundreds of recommendations it has made since 2010 to improve their IT, adding that more needs to be done even in an area often touted as an example of success, data center consolidation.
GAO provided an update of its work in the IT management area to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which was conducting one of its regular oversight hearings of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act to accompany the committee’s latest scorecard on compliance.
Since OMB launched the data center consolidation initiative in 2010, for example, agencies have closed 4,400 of the nearly 10,000 centers existing at the time, and have plans to close 1,600 more through fiscal year 2019, GAO said. “However, out of the 23 agencies that submitted required strategic plans, only 7 had addressed all required elements. GAO recommended that agencies complete their plans to optimize their data centers and achieve cost savings and ensure reported cost savings are consistent across reporting mechanisms,” it said.
Further, GAO’s assessment of 95 agency ratings of the level of risk in their IT investments concluded that agencies had understated risk in 60, while overstating it in just 13. And about a third of active software development projects are not meeting OMB’s goal of delivering new capabilities in smaller increments over shorter times to mitigate risk.
Also, only four agencies have made progress in implementing 2014 recommendations that they regularly track and maintain a comprehensive inventory and analyze that data to identify opportunities to reduce costs and better inform decision making.
GAO said that over 2010-2015 it made some 800 IT-related recommendations, of which it said 47 percent have been completed. It has since made some 200 others.
