Obama administration developing new IT procurement framework

The Obama administration is developing new guidelines for how federal agencies should purchase and install computers and other technology, according to a memo released Tuesday. Federal Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients sent an update on the president's management agenda to senior government managers on Tuesday in which he detailed the administration's efforts to close the technology gap between government and the private sector.

"The Federal Government largely has missed out on that transformation due to poor management of technology investments," Zients wrote. "IT projects too often cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than they should, take years longer than necessary to deploy, and deliver technologies that are obsolete by the time they are completed." Zients said the administration will spend the next two months developing a new framework for how agencies should procure, deploy and oversee information technology systems.

In addition to the new guidelines, the administration is also working to "fundamentally change" the way the federal government manages IT projects, by increasing oversight and scaling down or canceling projects that exceed their schedule and cost projections. The administration is also working to move more applications to the cloud in hopes of saving money and improving reliability.

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