The White House Office of Management and Budget issued new guidelines to federal agencies Wednesday on ways to share information technology services.
The Federal IT Shared Services Strategy, provides federal agency Chief Information Officers and key stakeholders takes aim at IT services as way to eliminate waste and duplication and reinvest in innovative mission systems.
Federal CIO, Steven VanRoekel also issued a memorandum to agency CIOs laying out requirements for agencies that support the strategy.This strategy is one of 25 action items identified in the December 2010 25-Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management.
According to a website:
The strategy covers the entire spectrum of IT shared service opportunities throughout the Federal Government and promotes the use of existing and new strategic sourcing methods where agencies can combine their buying power for similar IT needs and get lower prices and improved service leverage in the process.
OMB also issued an accompanying strategy document that addresses OMB’s latest position on developing enterprise architecture.
The document, called the Common Approach to Federal Enterprise Architecture, provides “agile, standardized methods and tools for designing the next generation of IT resources and shared services,” according to the announcement.
The document represents a renewed priority for the practice of enterprise architecture for OMB and the federal CIO. The emphasis on structuring technology design to align with agency business missions had lost momentum under former federal CIO Vivek Kundra as the potential of cloud computing and the need for IT reform took on higher importance.
The OMB post goes on to describe “Shared-First” strategy, saying it
“…will improve the return on investment for IT spending, close productivity gaps, increase communications with the managing partners and customers of shared services, and support agencies in implementing their PortfolioStat process per M-12-10.
“Shared-First principles and the Common Approach to making agencies future-ready creates new opportunities for industry to provide shared IT services to agencies that are more agile in delivery and more responsive to a wide variety of evolving mission, support, and commodity IT requirements. The strategy recognizes the need for agencies to gain proficiency in managing or consuming shared IT services and therefore provides an initial focus on commodity IT consolidation opportunities, as called for in the August 2011 OMB memo (M-11-29) to Chief Information Officers.
Click here to access the Federal IT Shared Services Strategy
Click here to access the Common Approach to Federal Enterprise Architecture