The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts keeps the busy system of court dockets running. It has information technology underpinning this work. The Government Accountability Office said the Courts lack a strategic approach to improving its IT staff. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with GAO’s Carol Harris, the director of Information Technology Acquisition Management…
Tom Temin: Now, Veterans Affairs has, I believe, the largest IT budget on the civilian side of the government. It’s either VA or Homeland security. But they’re big, they’re up there billions a year. Do we know what percentage of the IT dollars that these 14 contracts that did not have CIO involvement represent?
Carol Harris: There are in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars. So we had to narrow the scope of our review. So unfortunately, we couldn’t generalize the sample that we evaluated. However, we do know that if we founded within this select sample size, it’s fair to say that it’s a larger problem overall.
Tom Temin: Yeah, because a few hundred million is what every agency would love to have from the Technology Modernization Fund, for example, just to put it in context.
Carol Harris: Exactly. And so based on the findings of our review, we recommended that VA provide an automated check within their system to facilitate this compliance and remind contracting officers of VA’s FITARA approval requirements. And VA did concur with the recommendation… Read the interview here.
