The House Government Operations Subcommittee has scheduled a public hearing for July 28 at 2:00 p.m. EST for the release of the 12th edition of its FITARA Scorecard which rates major Federal agencies across a range of IT-related topics.
A witness list for the hearing has not yet been released for next week’s subcommittee hearing. Previous hearings for the semi-annual scorecard release have generally featured one or more Federal agency CIOs, and a representative from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
At the subcommittee’s last FITARA Scorecard hearing in April, Chairman Gerry Connolly, D-Va., indicated that IT modernization via the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) and its $1 billion cash infusion earlier this year might come into play for the 12th version of the scorecard. The TMF Board is still sifting through funding bids that it began to solicit in May.
“We look forward to engaging with the Office of Management Budget about the importance of IT modernization and this funding opportunity at the next FITARA hearing in July,” Rep. Connolly said in April.
Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., ranking member of the subcommittee, talked at the April hearing about the urgency of dealing with pandemic-related IT issues, and in particular, IT security issues as they relate to the need to modernize Federal IT. “These old systems simply are not able to manage the demands and expectations of Americans here in the 21st century, we’ve got to replace these legacy systems,” he said.
Based on results from the 11th version of the FITARA Scorecard, the software licensing category will have disappeared from the list of grading topics because every Federal agency had achieved an “A” grade. Taking its place will be a metric measuring agency progress in transitioning to the General Services Administration’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions contract for communications services.
