GAO Sees Effective Implementation of FITARA to Update Federal IT

The Government Accountability Office discovered that nine agencies successfully implemented provisions of a 2014 law requiring changes to governmentwide information technology management. GAO released a report on Monday highlighting the 12 practices that helped agencies implement the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act. 

Agency officials working on FITARA relied on senior leadership support, performance measures, an executive to manage the implementation, implementation policies, centralized software licenses management and a risk rating process for IT investments. The other practices were application rationalization, data center visits, utilizing the cloud, incentivizing agencies and using full capacity of data centers. 

The implemented FITARA provisions focused on CIO authority enhancements, enhanced transparency and improved risk management, portfolio review, data center consolidation and software purchasing. The agencies mentioned in the report are the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Justice and Veterans Affairs, the Agency for International Development, NASA and the General Services Administration.