The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is looking to take a more assertive role in federal IT oversight, deepening its partnership with federal agencies while empowering chief information officers (CIOs), an OMB official said Wednesday.
Speaking at GovExec’s Fed Tech Priorities event in Washington, Eric Ueland, deputy director for management at OMB, outlined how his team is helping agencies navigate their IT journeys.
His message focused on five key efforts: empowering CIOs, strengthening OMB’s partnership with agencies, reviewing legacy IT contracts, accelerating artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, and eliminating outdated requirements.
“First, we are empowering CIOs,” Ueland said, acknowledging that in the past, technology leaders were often brought into policy discussions too late.
“What we want to do is make sure that CIOs are fully empowered to be there at the beginning of conversations, that they are part of the formulation of budget policy from liftoff,” he said.
“So, CIOs, if we do this right, will be much more empowered to be not just part of the conversation in the beginning, but they’ll be able to continue to have their recommendations respected and, over time, be understood, and seen as a key contributor,” Ueland added.
Beyond elevating CIO authority, Ueland said OMB has “expanded and deepened” its role in partnership with agencies, aligning its management and budget functions to deliver consistent direction on technology priorities.
A key shift is abandoning custom-built systems. “Build bespoke is no more,” Ueland said, indicating that agencies should prioritize commercially available technology that can be procured and deployed quickly.
“We need to simplify, simplify, simplify,” he stressed.
OMB is also conducting a broad review of IT contracts, with Federal CIO Greg Barbaccia leading the effort.
“We need to anticipate the next 25 or 50 years,” Ueland said. “So, Greg and others, in partnership with our budget colleagues, are driving this significant review. We’re going to find opportunities to work with and encourage our CIO partners to leverage AI.”
The OMB official said that procurement reform through the is intended to speed decision-making and prevent agencies from lagging behind the private sector.
Ueland said Barbaccia and Kevin Rhodes, the administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, have been working in close collaboration on the “whole-of-enterprise” effort.
Finally, Ueland said OMB is “reducing – and in many cases attempting to wipe out – burden and ineffective requirements.”
If agencies can move “more effectively, more quickly, with commercially available tools,” he said, they will “produce savings for the taxpayer” while delivering on administration priorities.