Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. CONNOLLY. I thank my good friend and our distinguished ranking member of the committee, Mr. Cummings, for his graciousness and generosity. He has been a great leader and a great mentor in our committee. I also thank the distinguished chairman, Mr. Issa, for his leadership on this legislation. I have been proud to cosponsor and coauthor this bill with him.
In the 21st century, Mr. Speaker, effective governance is inextricably linked with how well government leverages technology to serve its citizens. Yet our current Federal laws governing IT management and procurement are antiquated and out of step with technological change and growth and yield poor results.
Far too often, cumbersome bureaucracy stifles innovation and prevents government from efficiently buying and deploying cutting-edge technology. Program failure and cost overruns plague the vast majority of major Federal IT investments.
As the distinguished chairman indicated, if only the rollout of the health care Web site were a unique incident. Unfortunately, it actually characterizes most major Federal IT procurement rollouts.
Some Federal managers report as much as 47 percent of their budgets are spent on maintaining inadequate or antiquated IT platforms. That is 47 percent.
In recent decades, taxpayers have been forced to foot the bill for massive IT program failures that ring up staggeringly high costs but exhibit astonishingly poor performance. For example, the Air Force invested 6 years in a modernization effort that cost more than $1 billion but failed to deliver a usable product, prompting the Assistant Secretary to state:
I am personally appalled at the limited capabilities that program has produced relative to that amount of investment.
This status quo is neither acceptable nor sustainable.
Again, I want to thank Chairman Issa for working with me in a productive manner to develop the bipartisan Issa-Connolly Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, or FITARA. This bipartisan legislation seeks to comprehensively streamline and strengthen the Federal IT acquisition process and promote the adoption of the best practices from the technology community.
The reform measure before us recognizes that effective Federal IT procurement reform must start with leadership and accountability. It is absolutely essential that a department's top leadership understands how critical effective IT investments are to an agency's operations and ability to carry out its future mission.
We must elevate and enhance the prestige and, more importantly, the authorities of CIOs across the Federal Government to hold them accountable and to give them the flexibility to effectively manage an agency's IT portfolio. Agency heads need talented leaders to serve as their primary advisers on IT management; to recruit and retain talented IT staff, as the distinguished chairman has indicated; and to oversee critical IT investments across the organization. Title I of our legislation would accomplish this while also avoiding one-size-fits-all solutions by allowing agencies significant discretion in implementing the various aspects of this new law.
Our bill would also accelerate data center optimization, as the distinguished ranking member indicated, and provide agencies with flexibility to leverage efficient cloud services and strengthen the accountability and transparency of Federal IT programs.
If enacted, 80 percent of the approximately $80 billion spent annually on Federal IT investment would be required to be posted on the public IT Dashboard, compared to the 50 percent or less that characterizes that activity today.
Strengthening the transparency requirements is an urgent and much-needed reform in light of the most recent January 2014 GAO report that revealed the IT Dashboard has not been updated for 15 of the last 24 months. This finding is as astonishing as it is unacceptable.
Fortunately, a bipartisan consensus is forming around the urgent need to further streamline and strengthen how the Federal Government acquires and deploys information technology. President Obama has embraced Federal IT procurement reform, and a number of agencies are already taking a lead in the area.
Now is the time, Mr. Speaker, to ensure reforms are adopted government wide and carry the force of reform law. I urge all of my colleagues to join us in this bipartisan effort in supporting this important and urgently needed reform.
In the 21st century, effective governance is inextricably linked with how well government leverages technology to serve its citizens.
Yet, our current Federal laws governing Federal IT management remain out of step with technological change and growth, with bureaucracy stifling innovation and preventing government from efficiently buying and deploying cutting edge technology.
Simply put, today Federal IT acquisition is often a cumbersome, bureaucratic, and wasteful exercise--characterized by a Federal Government that has no idea what technology it needs, struggles to manage what it has, and consequently wastes billions of taxpayer dollars on failed IT investments.
In recent decades, taxpayers have been forced to foot the bill for massive IT program failures that ring up staggeringly high costs, but exhibit astonishingly poor performance.
Program failure and cost overruns still plague the vast majority of major Federal IT investments, while Federal managers' report that 47 percent of their budget is spent on maintaining antiquated and inadequate IT platforms.
The annual price tag of this wasteful spending on Federal IT programs is estimated to add up to approximately $20 billion.
The Air Force invested six years in a modernization effort that cost more than $1 billion, but failed to deliver a usable product, prompting its Assistant Secretary to state, quote ``I am personally appalled at the limited capabilities that program has produced relative to that amount of investment.''
Of course, failing mission-critical IT investments do not only waste taxpayer dollars, but they jeopardize our Nation's safety, security, and economy.
From malfunctioning Census handheld computers that threatened to undermine a critical constitutional responsibility ..... to a promised electronic border fence that never materialized ..... time and time again, agency missions have been sabotaged by failed IT acquisitions and gross mismanagement.
This status quo is unacceptable and unsustainable.
The question facing us today is how can we modernize an IT procurement process designed for the 20th Century to meet the growing technology demands of the 21st?
There are no quick fixes or legislative silver bullets. However, I strongly believe that if Congress can limit partisan posturing, we may finally have an opportunity to address the core problem at the heart of the HealthCare.gov challenge--our Nation's broken Federal IT procurement system.
I want to thank Chairman Issa for working with me in a productive manner to develop the bipartisan Issa-Connolly Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, also known as FITARA.
Our bipartisan legislation seeks to comprehensively streamline and strengthen the Federal IT acquisition process and promote the adoption of best practices from the technology community.
We have solicited extensive input from all stakeholders to refine and improve our bill in an open and transparent manner.
The resulting Issa-Connolly reform measure recognizes that effective Federal IT procurement reform must start with leadership and accountability.
It is absolutely vital that a Department's top leadership understands how critical effective IT investments are to an agency's operations and ability to carry out its mission.
After reviewing the findings of extensive oversight reviews, and feedback from those in the trenches, I believe we must elevate and enhance the prestige, and more importantly, the authorities, of CIOs across the Federal Government to hold them accountable for effectively managing an agency's IT portfolio.
Agency heads must have talented leaders to serve as primary advisors on IT management ..... recruit and retain talented IT staff ..... and oversee critical IT investments.
Title I of FITARA would accomplish this, while also avoiding ``one-size-fits-all'' solutions by allowing agencies significant discretion in implementing the law.
In many respects, FITARA simply provides the force of law behind the August 2011 memorandum authored by then-OMB Director Jacob Lew, which announced that the Administration was committed to, quote:
``changing the role of Agency Chief Information Officers away from just policymaking and infrastructure maintenance, to encompass true portfolio management for all IT.
This will enable CIOs to focus on delivering IT solutions that support the mission and business effectiveness of their agencies and overcome bureaucratic impediments to deliver enterprise-wide solutions.''
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More than two years has passed since that policy memorandum was distributed to agencies, and it has become clear that efforts to reform IT through Administrative actions alone will not suffice.
In fact, if one takes the time to analyze FITARA vis-a 2-vis existing Administration IT initiatives, one will find that our bipartisan bill is consistent with, and seeks to build on, the nascent Federal IT initiatives that have emerged over the past five years, including those in the 25 Point Plan.
For example, the Issa-Connolly FITARA would enhance the CIO Council's role, tasking it with leading enterprise-wide portfolio management, and coordinating shared services and shared platforms across government.
This bipartisan bill would also empower agencies to eliminate duplicative and wasteful IT contracts that have proliferated for commonly-used, IT Commodity-like investments, such as e-mail.
In this era of austerity, agencies cannot afford to spend precious dollars and time creating duplicative, wasteful contracts for products and licenses they already own. In addition to improving how the government procures IT, this amendment would also enhance how the government deploys these tools.
Our bill would accelerate data center optimization, provide agencies with flexibility to leverage efficient cloud services, and strengthen the accountability and transparency of Federal IT programs.
If enacted, 80 percent of the approximately $80 billion annual Federal IT investment would be required to be posted on the public IT Dashboard, compared to the 50 percent coverage that exists today.
Strengthening the transparency requirements of the IT Dashboard is an urgent and much needed reform in light of the recent January 2014 GAO report that revealed the IT Dashboard has not been updated for 15 of the past 24 months! This finding was as astonishing as it was unacceptable.
The IT Dashboard was launched in 2009 with great fanfare, and to this day, OMB continues to claim that, quote ``The IT Dashboard gives the public access to the same tools and analysis that the government uses to oversee the performance of the Federal IT investments.''
Clearly providing the public with accurate and updated Federal IT investment performance data for only 9 months out of a 2-year period fails to give average citizens access to the same analysis used by agencies.
It certainly undermines OMB's claim that the IT Dashboard was launched to, quote shine ``light onto the performance and spending of IT investments,'' by ensuring that the public has access to data indicating not only whether a project is over budget or behind schedule, but providing specific dollars figures and dates.
Consistent with the principle that public contracts are public documents, our amendment also strengthens transparency in regard to the final negotiated price a company charges a Federal agency for a good or service.
Today, far too many agencies negotiate blanket purchase agreements in silos, without any knowledge that another agency has already negotiated a BPA with the same exact vendor, for the same exact product, but at a different price.
Nearly two decades has passed since the Information Technology Management Reform Act and the Federal Acquisition Reform Act were enacted through the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1996--reforms that are better known today as the foundational ``Clinger-Cohen Act.''
Fortunately, a bipartisan consensus is finally forming around the urgent need to further streamline and strengthen how the Federal Government acquires and deploys IT. President Obama has embraced Federal IT procurement reform and several agencies are already taking the lead in this area.
Now is the time to ensure reforms are adopted government-wide and carry the force of law.
The bipartisan Issa-Connolly Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act will enhance the statutory framework established by Clinger-Cohen to create an efficient and effective Federal IT procurement system that best serves agencies, industry, and most importantly, the American taxpayer.
I urge all my colleagues to join me in supporting this important and urgently needed bipartisan reform measure.
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