The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced the award of $12 million total from the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) for two new projects at the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
The new awards will go towards funding modernization projects at each agency, with $4 million going towards EEOC’s Charge and Case Management System project and $8 million for USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service system modernization. With the awards, roughly $23 million remains unallocated from the TMF.
For EEOC’s project, the agency plans to update its case management system to handle the more than 200,000 inquiries the system sees each year. The project aims to replace the need for alphanumeric codes and speed up the process while reducing costs. EEOC will move the system to the cloud
“Without this funding, EEOC would need to complete this project over a period of five years. However, with the support from the TMF the project can be conducted in FY 2020 and FY 2021 as a single effort to replace the legacy system,” the projects website states.
For the USDA, the system that the department aims to modernize supports the inspection and certification of fruits and vegetables. The current system uses “a combination of inefficient manual, paper-based processes and legacy information technology systems that are outdated and difficult to maintain,” according to the project’s website. To improve its system, USDA plans to move to the cloud and use an existing commercial solution to improve its processes by the end of fiscal year 2022.
“This project will ensure that perishable agricultural items are more efficiently moved through the inspection process ensuring the end consumer enjoys the freshest commodities possible,” the TMF website notes.