During a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing today to discuss the newly-released 14th installment of the committee’s FITARA Scorecard, several Federal chief information officers (CIOs) agreed the scorecard serves as a useful tool for their agencies to track IT-related performance, but also offered recommendations on how the scorecard could improve. […]

While progress in modernizing government technology is one of the overarching themes of the bi-annual FITARA scorecard issued by the House Oversight and Reform Committee, an official from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) testified on July 28 that the Federal government still spends over 60 percent of IT spending on maintaining legacy systems. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report released August 3 that Federal agencies still need to take action on about one-fifth of the cybersecurity recommendations that GAO has issued over the past ten years, and warned of increasing security risks until agencies address them. […]

Federal government IT and its ability to deliver vital services to citizens is often said to be one of the few notably bipartisan issues left in Congress, and that sentiment was on clear display as the House Government Operations Subcommittee unveiled its tenth FITARA Scorecard at a public hearing on August 3. […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is in the final stages of planning for its transition to a commercial electronic health record (EHR) system, but faces congressional concern on two fronts: the agency’s inability to reliably define costs for the existing VistA system, and its estimate of $4.8 billion to maintain the system throughout the EHR transition effort. […]

The chairman and ranking member of the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Government Reform delivered a clear to-do list on Thursday to Federal CIOs: pursue further data center consolidation, tighten the reporting lines between CIOs and agency heads, and craft better roadmaps for IT modernization. […]

Congressional concerns over the revision to the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB’s) Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) policy were a main focal point during a hearing on the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) Scorecard 8.0 today. […]

Federal CIO Suzette Kent tops the witness list for the House Government Operations Subcommittee’s June 26 hearing to assess implementation of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), and to release the eighth version of the full House Oversight and Reform Committee’s FITARA Scorecard that grades Federal agencies on their progress under the law, MeriTalk has learned. […]

The House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization held its first hearing of the year today with hopes of getting a baseline reading from the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Information and Technology (VA OIT) – but with no OIT representation, the committee went ahead and discussed the department’s challenges with panelists from VA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO). […]

MeriTalk has announced the winners of its FITARA Awards for the seventh iteration of the FITARA Scorecard released in December, recognizing seven agencies for their progress in IT modernization. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) launched its new Science, Technology Assessment and Analytics (STAA) team on Tuesday, with a focus on enhancing GAO’s ability to audit technology. […]

While yesterday’s hearing held by two House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittees was a mostly upbeat affair given the better grades earned by several Federal agencies on the committee’s latest FITARA scorecard, committee members also grilled witnesses about impediments that stand in the way of agencies implementing a key aspect of the MGT (Modernizing Government Technology) Act. […]

Federal agencies can earn better grades on their next FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) scorecard by taking action on three items that underpin the scoring–software inventories, CIO reporting lines, and setting up working capital funds for IT improvements as authorized by the MGT (Modernizing Government Technology) Act–members of Congress and an official with the Government Accountability Office said today. […]

In written testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee before the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) Scorecard hearing on Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlighted areas where Federal agencies had not implemented recommendations from previous GAO reports. […]

Witnesses from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will testify tomorrow at a hearing of two House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittees that will examine Federal agency efforts to implement the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), and the FITARA Scorecard 7.0 issued by the committee earlier today. […]

The Social Security Administration’s (SSA) IT modernization efforts won praise from the agency’s inspector general and the Government Accountability Office at a House hearing on Sept. 27, but drew a more mixed review from members of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Social Security Subcommittee. […]

During a congressional hearing on the Department of Veterans Affairs’ $10 billion electronic health records (EHR) modernization effort and the Department of Defense EHR effort–called Military Health System Genesis–House members voiced concern about who is in charge of interoperability efforts. […]

Carol Harris, director for information technology acquisition management issues at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), will take over the FITARA-related responsibilities of Dave Powner–GAO’s departing director of IT issues–while Nick Marinos, director of cybersecurity and information management at GAO, will pick up Powner’s responsibilities on Census issues, GAO confirmed to MeriTalk.   […]