PortfolioStat

Before leaving the Obama administration, Tony Scott, the federal CIO, released a report for the next administration to better understand the past, current and potential future of technology in agencies.

Adelle Rydman, director of federal business for Zenoss, makes the case for agencies to do more to make sure their networks are running as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Agencies are under an Aug. 15 deadline to describe how they’ll implement the a key part of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act. As part of a forthcoming FITARA dashboard, OMB wants to broadcast those plans as widely as possible.

The Office of Management and Budget says PortfolioStat data is proving the positive impact agile development is having on IT projects. The U.S. Digital Service is providing both help and training to expand the understanding and use of agile development.

The Office of Management and Budget says “stat” sessions — Portofolio Stat, Tech Stat, etc. — have saved the government millions of dollars. Agencies are developing their own approaches to the Stat model. Bob Behn is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He publishes the Performance Leadership Report, and his latest book is The PerformanceStat Potential: A Leadership Strategy for Producing Results. On In Depth with Francis Rose, Bob said one big problem with implementing Stat sessions is convincing people they won’t be bashing sessions.

Federal Chief Information Officer Steve VanRoekel says good management policies should be enough to improve how agencies buy, operate and deliver technology.

In this edition of Inside the Reporter’s Notebook, Executive Editor Jason Miller shares news and buzz about the IT and acquisition communities.

In the fiscal 2015 budget, the White House laid out initiatives that fall under each of the four pillars of the management agenda. The federal IT budget would drop to $79.1 billion in 2015 — down from $81.4 billion in 2014.

Agencies must use only cloud services that have been approved under the Federal Risk Authorization and Management Program (FedRAMP) by June. OMB will receive more details on agency progress with the latest quarterly update through PortfolioStat. Meanwhile, FedRAMP’s security baseline will be revised this summer.

PortfolioStat is widely deployed across federal agencies and thus well worth exploring how we may be able to maximize the benefits derived from it.