In many cases, inspector general reports don’t tally up to good news for Federal agencies, but not this time.
A recent audit by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the Social Security Administration (SSA) found that the information SSA reported to the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Information Technology (IT) Dashboard was accurate and reliable.
A continuing complaint about the OMB IT portal has been whether the data accurately portrays the current state of agency IT projects. In the case of SSA, it does, at least as far as the OIG measured for Fiscal Year 2019.
The IT Dashboard displays general information on Federal IT investments, including non-major investments and detailed data for those investments that agencies classify as major. In May 2019, SSA reported 60 investments, totaling $1.9 billion, for Fiscal Year 2019. Additionally, SSA said it was using 80 percent of its data centers’ capacity, and had achieved $541 million in cumulative data center cost savings between 2012 and 2018.
The audit did find that in some instances, SSA over-reported cost savings for the Data Center Optimization Initiative by approximately $100,000. This happened because, in some cases, the agency calculated the cost savings twice. However, the OIG found that overall, the information SSA reported to the IT Dashboard was reliable.
“We are not making recommendations since the information SSA reported to the IT Dashboard was reliable, and the Agency plans to update the cost savings it over-reported in its upcoming OMB reporting,” the report concludes.
