Technological know-how Small business Administration: OMB and GSA Have to have to Fortify Efforts to Guide Federal Adoption

What GAO Identified

The Office environment of Management and Funds (OMB) and Basic Solutions Administration (GSA) have taken steps to direct authorities-extensive Engineering Organization Administration adoption, but progress and benefits are restricted.

• OMB’s initial 2017 plans for authorities-extensive adoption needed companies to report IT paying out employing classes in the initially two levels. OMB continued to call for reporting of these two levels in subsequent strategies. Even so, 5 decades after creating initial strategies, OMB experienced not expanded on necessities to consist of the rest of the taxonomy—the categories in levels 3 and 4, and subcategories for all levels (see determine).

Extent That the Business office of Administration and Budget’s (OMB) Strategies Tackled Things of the Technologies Business enterprise Management Taxonomy Variation 3.

• OMB and GSA assisted agency efforts to put into practice the Engineering Small business Management framework by, for case in point, establishing implementation assistance and a maturity design assessment software. Nonetheless, OMB and GSA have not assessed company maturity. Further more, they have not analyzed the good quality of agencies’ information described in the initial two layers.
• OMB and GSA produced company-claimed facts on the federal government’s IT Dashboard (levels 1 and 2), but did not disclose that about $31 billion in fiscal calendar year 2021 investments were being excluded. More, they have not analyzed inconsistencies in fiscal calendar year 2022 information, or tackled use of benchmarking that would permit paying out comparisons to corporations of comparable dimension or mission.

OMB and GSA officers preserve that Know-how Enterprise Administration implementation carries on to be a precedence. Nonetheless, till OMB establishes documented designs and company anticipations for the remainder of the taxonomy, uncertainty will cloud company efforts. More, the continuing absence of OMB way could prevent the federal governing administration from completely achieving supposed positive aspects these kinds of as optimizing IT spending.

Why GAO Did This Study

The authorities has confronted longstanding challenges in IT management and paying transparency. In 2017, OMB declared its intention to make improvements to insights into IT spending by governing administration-large adoption of the Engineering Business enterprise Administration Council’s framework.

This framework provides a regular taxonomy that is organized into 4 levels (value pools, IT towers, items and companies, and business enterprise units and abilities) intended to demonstrate an organization’s whole IT expending from distinct perspectives. These four layers are comprised of spending groups and subcategories.

GAO was requested to report on Technology Small business Management implementation. GAO’s goal was to detect progress OMB and GSA have built in the government-huge adoption energy. To do so, GAO analyzed and in contrast designs in opposition to applicable conditions, these as Technologies Small business Administration Council assistance. It also analyzed details, as noted by agencies for fiscal decades 2021 and 2022, and interviewed applicable officers.