5 Key Components of the New Federal IT Shared Services Strategy

The White House released the “Federal IT Shared Services Strategy” last week that outlines the steps federal agencies need to take in implementing Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel’s “Shared First” policy.

Here are five key components that will be of immediate concern to federal agencies:

1. There are a number of deadlines that federal agencies must now be held accountable to in the next 12 months: They must submit an Enterprise Roadmap to the Office of Management and Budget that includes the agency’s Commodity IT Consolidation Plan by August 31. Agencies must complete two OMB approved IT shared service initiatives and report the status to OMB by December 31, and agencies must submit an updated Enterprise Roadmap to OMB by April 1, 2013.
2. Shared services could mean major cuts for the government’s federal information technology spend. According to a chart inside the document, there are 4,397 planned IT projects in budget year 2013 that could be seen as redundant in some way at a cost of more than $46.5 billion, more than half of the government’s total IT annual spend.
3. Commodity IT is first on the list of items to be shared. The document says agency CIOs can accelerate the adoption of “Shared First” by focusing on commodity IT and using PortfolioStat process and agency-wide enterprise architecture to identify areas of waste and duplication.
4. Agencies must also develop a line of business service plan that includes an assessment of each associated IT shared service area, and a plan to improve quality and increase uptake in each area by the end of FY13. The LOB service plan should discuss challenges and opportunities in each shared service area, such as needed adjustments to funding models, supplier issues, implementation of legacy federal initiatives, security, data privacy and changes in customer requirements that may result in significant changes to services. The first of these is due August 31.
5. There will be a creation of an online IT services catalog that will launch in FY12 and provide federal agencies a list of available services and contract vehicles that will give a full spectrum of interagency IT shared service options.