Workforce issues remain among the major areas needing attention in improving the government’s IT, GAO told a recent House hearing.
The government plans to spend $89 billion on IT in the current fiscal year and “historically, these investments have frequently failed, incurred cost overruns and schedule slippages, or contributed little to mission-related outcomes,” GAO said, with one result being enactment in late 2014 of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act.
Successfully carrying out that law will require that agencies use IT workforce planning to ensure they have the knowledge and skills needed, the witness said, but a late 2016 report found for example that none of the five agencies reviewed had put such practices in place fully.
“For example, none of these agencies had fully assessed their competency and staffing needs regularly or established strategies and plans to address gaps in these areas. These weaknesses were due, in part, to agencies lacking comprehensive policies that required these practices,” he said.
He said agencies also need to improve their assessments of the level of risk facing an IT investment–in another report, GAO had found that agencies are much more likely to under-estimate risk than to over-estimate it–and to put in place an OMB policy stressing smaller investments, which are less risky and that deliver capabilities more quickly than larger ones.