This report, by U.S. Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, issued on Dec. 9, 2010, outlines 25 areas Federal Agencies need to address in producing greater return for the government’s investment in information technology.

The report notes: Information technology should enable government to better serve the American people. But despite spending more than $600 billion on information technology over the past decade, the Federal Government has achieved little of the productivity improvements that private industry has realized from IT.

It continues: Too often, Federal IT projects run over budget, behind schedule, or fail to deliver promised functionality. Many projects use “grand design” approaches that aim to deliver functionality every few years, rather than breaking projects into more manageable chunks and demanding new functionality every few quarters. In addition, the Federal Government too often relies on large, custom, proprietary systems when “light technologies” or shared services exist.

The 25 point action plan detailed in the report aims to deliver more value to the American taxpayer. These actions have been planned over the next 18 months and place ownership with OMB and agency operational centers, as appropriate.

Some highlights of the implementation plan include:

• Turnaround or terminate at least one-third of underperforming projects in IT portfolio within
the next 18 months
• Shift to “Cloud First” policy . Each agency will identify three “must move” services within three
months, and move one of those services to the cloud within 12 month and the remaining two
within 18 months .
• Reduce number of Federal data centers by at least 800 by 2015
• Only approve funding of major IT programs that:
− Have a dedicated program manager and a fully staffed integrated program team
− Use a modular approach with usable functionality delivered every six months
− Use specialized IT acquisition professionals
• Work with Congress to:
− Consolidate commodity IT funding under the Agency CIOs and
− Develop flexible budget models that align with modular development
• Launch an interactive platform for pre-RFP agency-industry collaboration