The Food and Drug Administration’s new IT strategic plan does not align with strategic priorities and goals that the agency defined for 2014 – 2018, GAO has said.
It said the plan, released in September, describes the current state of the agency’s IT environment, along with the Office of Information Management and Technology’s mission, vision and objectives of three strategic themes – quality service, security, and efficiency.
The plan also defines performance measures and initiatives intended to support the office’s strategic themes, GAO said.
However, it faulted the plan because, for example, it does not identify results-oriented goals and performance measures and targets for measuring the extent to which outcomes of IT initiatives support the FDA’s ability to achieve agency-wide goals and objectives.
It also said the plan fails to identify strategies the governing IT organization will use to support agency-wide goals and objectives and key IT initiatives and interdependencies to be managed.
But while it has not yet developed a comprehensive IT strategic plan, the agency has improved enterprise architecture development and IT human capital planning by implementing 4 of 9 prior recommendations, according to GAO-16-182.
It said that HHS agreed with recommendations to define schedules and milestones for incorporating elements into its strategic plan that align with the agency’s mission and business strategies, as well as to fully implement the plan.
