As the federal government’s savings and purchasing expert, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has a record of delivering smart, synchronized IT solutions to federal agencies and providing significant savings to the American taxpayer. One important way in which GSA drives those savings is by helping to lead governmentwide IT reform. GSA’s record of leadership is clear: from strategically applying the TechStat process to demonstrating the value of the Administration’s cloud-first policy, GSA has partnered across the government to deliver on the ambitious goals of a modern and cost-efficient Federal digital strategy.
GSA has seen serious successes with the Obama Administration’s IT reform agenda. For example, we have embraced the TechStat process as an essential element of the IT review process. By convening key stakeholders and tackling IT challenges in a targeted and strategic way, TechStat provided a new lens that helped determine the best approach for the short- and long-term success of our IT portfolio. For instance, by reviewing the Identity Credential and Access Management investment, GSA significantly reduced the required number of resource-intensive system integrations and accelerated project delivery time by 18 months. By cutting inefficiency and boosting productivity through the TechStat process, we identified more than $600,000 in resources that were then diverted to other programmatic areas.
GSA has also been a leader on the Administration’s Cloud First policy. Last June, we transitioned the agency’s email from a traditional, hardware-heavy platform to a cutting edge, cloud-based system. Doing so has uncovered tremendous savings and tangible benefits including faster upgrades, lower management costs, reduced waste and redundancy, and improved agency-wide collaborative capacity. Perhaps most importantly, the move to the cloud is expected to reduce email system operating costs by 50% — nearly $3 million — every year.
Finally, in coordination with OMB’s Shared Services, Digital Government and PortfolioStat initiatives, GSA is embarking on a comprehensive IT portfolio review designed to ensure an enterprise approach to information technology within the Agency. Past consolidation and cloud delivery successes such as GSA’s transition to the Google platform are a springboard to streamline GSA’s enterprise content management, internal acquisition tools, customer management capabilities and infrastructure. Consistent with the OMB Shared Service plans, GSA will consolidate several regional content management systems into the enterprise solution. We will also deliver a major component of GSA’s Solicitation Writing System supporting enterprise internal acquisition.
The 25-Point Plan for Federal IT Reform is bold and ambitious, but GSA is proud to be a part of the accomplishments it has produced. We will use these successes as the foundation for more innovation and steeper savings.
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