Nearly seven months after the Trump administration announced its plan to overhaul the government’s shared services landscape, most of the lead agencies have created standards in their designated areas and are getting ready to move into the implementation phase. But the work is far from over, several leaders agreed.
In April, the Office of Management and Budget issued a policy establishing a new shared services regime led by Quality Service Management Offices, or QSMOs, empowered to craft governmentwide standards and manage a marketplace of solutions to be offered to federal agencies.
The initial push began with four QSMOs leading four areas: The General Services Administration taking on the task of human resources transactions, primarily through the NewPay program; the Treasury Department setting standards for financial management; the Homeland Security Department taking the lead on cybersecurity; and Health and Human Services taking up grants management.
Three of those first initiatives have gone through the standards-setting process to figure out common needs and taxonomies work across government and where there will need to be customized solutions. The grants management work at HHS has taken longer than expected, officials said Thursday, as there was less existing consensus among agencies than with the other three areas.
“We’re now moving from planning to real implementation,” Federal Chief Information Officer Suzette Kent said during a keynote Thursday at the Association of Government Accountant’s annual Shared Services Summit. First on the block will be GSA’s NewPay, which the administration has put forward as a test case for the entire QSMO program.
As GSA paves the way, “we ..
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