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Positive identification of friends and foes is a matter of life and death for U.S. troops and local citizens in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mistake an enemy for a friend, and a terrorist gains access to a crowded U.S. base or a secure town. Mistake a friend for an enemy, and a supporter is lost or an insurgent is created.
Helping U.S. and coalition service members and Iraqi and Afghan security forces quickly make these life-saving decisions was a critical need in Iraq and Afghanistan. A small Army center in Fort Huachuca, Ariz., led the effort to find innovative biometric technology and field it fast to create identity databases that help Soldiers and Marines tell friend from foe quickly on the ground.
During a live CGI Initiative webinar on Tuesday, December 14, Kathy DeBolt, Deputy Army Training and Doctrine Command Capabilities Manager for Biometrics and Forensics at the Army Center of Excellence Language Technology Office, explained how her team and a group of innovative companies collaborated to rapidly put game-changing biometrics capability into the hands of security forces. Our Executive Guide provides key takeaways from the webinar and additional on-line resources.
If you missed this webinar, you can view a full replay here. |
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Government is racing to get green.
Federal agencies have established Chief Sustainability Officers and are developing aggressive plans for creating renovating and buildings to be greener and smarter–reducing energy consumption and water usage and ending waste-generating practices. Chief Information Officers are consolidating data centers to reduce greenhouse gases and energy use. Companies serving government are beginning to measure, manage, reduce and report on energy/environmental goals. Now, as never before, getting green means transforming the way agencies operate.
During a CGI Initiative webinar on Wednesday, December 1, CGI Initiative Fellow Molly O’Neill and Andrew McLauchlin, Executive Director of the CGI Initiative, discussed insights and lessons learned about achieving energy savings at all levels, from buildings to the data center and beyond. Our Executive Guide provides
key takeaways from the webinar and additional on-line resources. If you missed this webinar, you can view a full replay here. |
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By Andrew McLauchlin, Executive Director, CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government
December 2, 2010 “They listened! Now the key is in the execution.” That’s the consensus I’ve heard from people in industry regarding Friday’s announcement by Acting OMB Director Jeff Zients outlining a five-step plan to reform IT procurement and management. The plan sets forth steps to drive IT reform as promised this summer by former OMB Director Peter Orszag. Parts of the plan that jumped out at me as widely supported actions (many of which were  highlighted in a paper by CGI Initiative Fellow Pat Healy this summer) include:
- Creating a cadre of IT acquisition professionals who know how to buy IT.
- Putting quality people in charge of federal IT projects by establishing a career track for IT program managers.
- Emphasizing close collaboration and alignment of goals and incentives on IT projects across integrated government teams spanning program, IT, acquisition, and finance leadership.
- Creating a tight connection between IT project leaders and accountable senior department leadership.
- Disproving myths about government’s communication with industry and encouraging outreach in full compliance with the FAR.
- Broadening collaboration with industry, to include developing mechanisms for sharing best practices and solutions between agencies and the IT community on a regular basis.
- Working with Congress to pilot additional use of flexible and accountable IT budget and acquisition models, such as the one now used at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
- Adopting light technologies and shared solutions as part of the 2012 budget process.
Of course, the difficulty will come in the execution. Here are some ideas that can help agencies implement these initiatives in a way that is most helpful to their agencies, one IT program at a time.
- When deploying fast, agile IT acquisition processes, look to leverage existing assets, capabilities and approaches from peer government organizations. For specific ideas in this area, see info on the Nov. 18 CGI Initiative webinar, where Recovery.gov director Mike Wood shared how the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board went from zero to live in less than four months on FederalReporting.gov and Recovery.gov. And over the past year, HHS has pumped out Healthcare.gov releases within weeks, and multiple incremental releases per month for myMedicare.gov with little fanfare. Surely there are lessons to be learned in agility from those efforts. Look for more from the CGI Initiative on those and other agile examples in the near future.
- When creating integrated program teams, include contractor leadership as part of the integrated management team. This step can fuse all accountable leaders for consistent communications to enable agile issue resolution, risk mitigation and course correction. For examples of this approach, see the RATB white paper and webinar, as well as case studies on the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid in the CGI Initiative’s paper on Building Successful Professional Services Partnerships.
- When deploying light technologies and shared solutions, agencies can benefit from assessing where such initiatives fit into their long term and annual IT plans. For example, proven industry practices in this area include evaluating IT program architecture in terms of how it can reuse existing assets and how it affects those assets; establishing an annual IT work plan to execute incrementally in the short term; and regularly reviewing the work plan for potential issues and course corrections. Look for more on IT governance best practices in summaries of past CGI Initiative events and in future blog posts in the coming months.
- When broadening collaboration with industry, seek neutral ground for government-industry engagement. For example, agencies can leverage organizations (such as the American Council for Technology and the Industry Advisory Council) with pre-existing bylaws that govern ethical public-private sector exchange. For example, in 2010 the Department of Veterans Affairs engaged with ACT-IAC to analyze best practices related to its VistA program,
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The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board
faced a daunting task after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
was enacted in February 2009. In a fraction of the usual time, the
board had to stand up two large-scale Web sites coordinating input from
28 agencies to track $787 billion in stimulus funds. Failure was not an
option. The largest federal economic plan since the Great Depression
hung in the balance. The project was described
as "extremely high risk – fraught with numerous challenges, any one of
which could torpedo the entire venture." It took fast and effective
collaboration among federal agencies, companies and nonprofits to make
this unprecedented reporting project work.
During a CGI
Initiative webinar on Thursday, November 18, Michael Wood, Recovery.gov
Director, and Andrew McLauchlin, Executive Director of the CGI
Initiative, discussed insights and lessons learned from the successful
stand-up of the Recovery Act Web sites. Our Executive Guide provides
key takeaways from the webinar and additional on-line resources. If you missed this webinar, you can view a full replay here. |
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Federal executives are reshaping programs to fit an always-on, right-now, personalized, mobile, app-driven world. They seek new ways to make sense of information faster to solve problems that threaten Americans’ livelihoods and even their lives. They are innovating on the run to stay within ever tighter budgets while meeting ever greater expectations.
The CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government strives to provide executives the expert insights about field-tested innovations they need to master today’s huge challenges. This fall, in partnership with Government Executive magazine, we are offering three free, up-to-the-minute webinars featuring practical advice and lessons learned about speed and agility in standing up technology programs that have critical consequences for the U.S. economy, the environment and the fight against terrorism.
No Model, No Time, No Margin for Error: Building FederalReporting.gov and Recovery.gov
Michael Wood
Director, Recovery.gov
Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board
Thursday, November 18, 2010
2:00 p.m. EST “By any normal measure, the project should have failed. Indeed, the idea of developing two large-scale websites in a fraction of the usual time was enough to scare off 95 percent of eligible contractors from even bidding. An independent evaluation of the plan deemed it ‘extremely high risk’ – fraught with numerous challenges, any one of which could torpedo the entire venture. Just coordinating input from 28 federal agencies would be a significant achievement in governmental operations.”
That’s how the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board described the task ahead after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was enacted in February 2009. Failure was not an option. The largest federal economic plan since the Great Depression hung in the balance.
By August, 2009, Recovery award recipients began registering on FederalReporting.gov and on October 1 they started filing 130,000 separate data reports. On October 30, Recovery.gov began posting and displaying data transferred from FederalReporting.gov in ways policymakers, legislators and citizens can understand. It took fast and effective collaboration among federal agencies, companies and nonprofits to make this unprecedented reporting project work.
Please join the Recovery Board’s Michael Wood as he tells the inside story of one of the fastest and most effective stand-ups of a complex technology project in government history. Hear lessons the Recovery Board learned that are applicable to other large-scale IT projects. Add your own perspectives as Mr. Wood discusses how the data-reporting model for 275 programs handling ARRA funds can be applied across government in the future.
Getting to Green: Cut Costs and
Increase Efficiency While Reducing Your Agency’s Environmental Footprint Molly O’Neill
Former CIO, Environmental Protection Agency
Member, National Academy of Public Administration Panel on the NOAA Climate Service
Fellow, CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government
Thursday, December 1, 2010
2:00 p.m. EST Lives on the Line: Identifying the Enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan Kathy J. DeBolt
Deputy Army Training and Doctrine Command Capabilities Manager for Biometrics and Forensics
Army Center of Excellence Language Technology Office
Fort Huachuca, Ariz.
Thursday, December 14, 2010
2:00 p.m. EST |
The need for speed, agility, accountability and efficiency in acquisition continues to grow, adding pressure to an outdated procurement system and a workforce badly in need of numbers and new skills.
The Obama administration has made acquisition reform a key focus of its management agenda, issuing myriad rule changes and policies. Agency executives need to understand the context and implications of these changes in order to take advantage of them to get better acquisition results while remaining in compliance.
To help, the CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government has assembled online a quick-reference guide to acquisition changes. The guide provides an overview of recent policy and rule changes, outlines implications and resources for agencies, lists important due dates.
Just last week, the administration published two important new memoranda agency executives are now reading and digesting.
One, came from Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Jeffrey Zients, and was addressed directly to senior executives.
Zients’ Sept. 14 memo, “The Accountable Government Initiative – an Update on Our Performance Management Agenda,” is the most comprehensive statement yet of the administration’s management agenda, which focuses on:
• driving high-priority goals,
• eliminating waste
• reforming federal contracting
• closing the information technology gap
• promoting transparency and open government
• attracting top talent to the government.
The other important new memo, “Better Buying Power: Guidance for obtaining Greater Efficiency and Productivity in Defense Spending,” also came out Sept. 14 from Undersecretary of Defense Ashton Carter to enact reforms announced June 28 by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Both memos contain initiatives executives will need to understand and enact. The Defense memo contains a host of specific recommendations, many of them applicable governmentwide, for controlling costs, prompting better performance and innovation by contractors, promoting competition, and enhancing services contracting. The OMB memo sets a context for Obama administration reforms to come.
Because they are varied and often build sequentially, recent acquisition changes are best addressed together and in context. The CGI Initiative’s new quick reference guide is designed to make that easy for busy executives to do.
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The CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government has been closely following the recent flood of memoranda and guidance from the Office of Management and Budget on information technology project reviews, programs and management and spending freezes and cost-cutting requirements for the FY 2012 budget.
To help federal executives make best use of these memoranda, we offer a new quick-reference guide. The guide provides an overview of each document, an outline of key requirements, and a list of important due dates.
Our recently released issue brief, “Financial Systems Modernizations: How to Accelerate Value and Boost Savings,” also can help. It specifically outlines approaches for meeting the mandates of OMB’s Financial Systems Modernization memorandum.
As agency executives work to meet new OMB requirements, the CGI Initiative will continue to work to analyze the memoranda and develop practical insight about their implications.
Soon, we will be releasing a similar quick-reference guide to the Obama Administration’s many acquisition reforms. Please watch for it, and if you have questions or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
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By Anne Laurent, Director, CGI Initiative for Collaborative
Government
August 6, 2010 Agency executives are working to comply with a host of new Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memos about IT project reviews and spending freezes, as well as the requirement to cut costs and speed delivery to meet a 5 percent budget reduction for fiscal 2012.
To assist executives in meeting these challenges and in managing their IT portfolios, the CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government recently published an Issue Brief, “Financial Systems Modernizations: How to Accelerate Value and Boost Savings.” It contains a host of useful approaches to improving efficiency and effectiveness in modernizing and implementing IT systems.
The Issue Brief captures recommendations from experienced former Chief Finance Officers and Chief Information Officers for accelerating value and reducing costs during financial and other IT system modernizations.
The 10 levers for rooting out cost and three recommendations for scoping implementations into smaller segments apply as agencies work to meet the requirements of OMB memos requiring them to identify and remediate high-risk IT projects, adopt new IT investment baseline management policies and adhere to new IT management and procurement policies coming soon.
For example, the brief recommends that agencies pay only for the service levels they need, noting that higher service level requirements correlate directly to higher costs. A requirement to have a system available 99.9 percent of the time, for example, requires more servers, backups and communications redundancy than a 99 percent or 98.5 percent requirement.
The brief also recommends scoping system implementations into segments that will eliminate the need for legacy or cuff systems. This approach not only meets the mandate to split IT projects into smaller segments with clear deliverables, |
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