Taking the long view, federal agencies have been making progress on IT modernization goals since the House began tracking them in 2015 through a biannual scorecard. But the latest report card shows some slippage, mostly due to a new metric.
Since the passage of the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act, or FITARA, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform has commissioned two scorecards each year measuring agencies' progress in a host of IT reform areas.
While the initial scorecard only measured key provisions from the FITARA legislation—including budget and hiring authority for agency chief information officers, transparency and risk management through reporting to the IT Dashboard, portfolio reviews with administration officials and progress closing and optimizing data centers—the committee has since added additional metrics. As of the last scorecard released in August, agencies are also measured on their use of the Modernizing Government Technology, or MGT, Act—which established the central Technology Modernization Fund and the ability to create working capital funds at each agency—and cybersecurity reporting through the Federal Information Security Management Act, or FISMA, framework.
Now, for the 11th scorecard, the committee added another letter grade: progress transitioning from legacy telecommunications contracts to the General Services Administration's new Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions, or EIS, contract.
Agencies have until early 2022 to make the full transition to the contract, something GSA has been vocal about since the $50 billion contract was awarded in 2017. However, as many as 11 agencies told the Government Accountability Office—which compiles the scorecard—that they won't make the deadline.
Individual agency progress on the EIS transition was included in failures latest fitara scorecard agencies
