The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has entered into an agreement with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) as part of GSA’s Centers of Excellence (CoE) initiative to accelerate establishing and operationalizing an Innovation Lab at GAO and provide additional technical infrastructure and cloud configuration support, the administration announced on Tuesday.
“Today’s announcement illustrates the momentum of the CoE to deliver outcomes that drive mission effectiveness,” said TTS director Anil Cheriyan. “Putting innovation at the core of everything we do, we’re excited to engage with GAO and provide guidance along their exciting journey.”
The CoE will centralize best practices and expertise for holistic transformation to improve agencies services, accessibility, efficiency, and effectiveness with modern applications, platforms, processes, personnel and software solutions.
Additionally, the engagement will expedite GAO’s Authority to Operate (ATO) processes for its Innovation Lab’s cloud-based infrastructure, services and tools. It will also advance the configuration of a flexible, scalable and secure computational environment that is responsive to current and future needs.
GAO’s Innovation Lab will help redefine auditing by prototyping novel data science capabilities and exploring oversight impacts of emerging technologies, including digital ledgers and robotic process automation.
The agreement with GAO marks the seventh agency to partner with GSA to enact the CoE approach to modernization. Of the other six agencies to work with GSA on CoE include: the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, and the U.S. Department of Labor.
“With this latest CoE engagement, we look forward to building upon our prior work transforming federal IT to improve services to citizens,” said Executive Director of the CoE Bob De Luca. “Leveraging the CoE modernization approach will help GAO further its mission of helping the government save money and work more efficiently.”
About GSA
The mission of the U.S. General Services Administration is to deliver value and savings in real estate, acquisition, technology, and other mission-support services across the government. One of GSA’s four strategic goals is to improve the way agencies buy, build and use technology.