Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va. – ranking member of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation – expressed disappointment today in his Republican colleagues for a lack of participation in the 17th edition of the FITARA Scorecard.
The FITARA Scorecard grades the 24 largest Federal agencies on a variety of IT-related categories. Those grades are compiled with input from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and have been published semi-annually – usually by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee – since 2015.
However, today marked the second time that Rep. Connolly issued the scorecard on his own, holding a roundtable discussion with agency representatives to discuss it rather than via an official subcommittee hearing.
“I want to mention how disappointed I am that our Republican majority has turned its back on the FITARA Scorecard,” Rep. Connolly said. “The scorecard has been a bipartisan oversight project for more than eight years with Republican champions like Mark Meadows, Will Hurd, and Darrell Issa.”
“It has helped save nearly $30 billion, closed 4,000 unnecessary data centers, expanded the use of working capital funds as flexible vehicles for IT modernization funding, almost doubled the percentage of Federal IT projects using incremental development to deliver functionality, and empowered agency chief information officers (CIOs) with greater budget and procurement authority and a more direct reporting relationship to agency leadership,” he added. “The scorecard sits at the heart of this subcommittee’s mandate to oversight Federal IT.”
Last year, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., took over as chairwoman of the subcommittee. Rep. Connolly said that he worked collaboratively with Rep. Mace to evolve the FITARA Scorecard categories, and she pledged to continue FITARA oversight hearings under her leadership.
Nevertheless, Rep. Connolly said that now is not the time for the subcommittee to turn its back on FITARA, adding that he is “determined not to let that happen.”
“What we don’t want to do is say, ‘Well, we’ve achieved victory. Let’s move on.’ That is exactly what we don’t want to do because we know that progress is uneven. We know not everyone’s in the same boat,” he said. “We know that there are lots of aspects of IT that still need to be addressed – legacy systems, cloud computing, cyber protections, the role of the CIO, on and on – and we need to capture that, and we need to stay on top of it.”
“This is bipartisan – it has no partisan aspect to it at all,” he concluded. “I hope we can soon return to the traditional biannual oversight hearing cadence of the FITARA Scorecard. Others would be hard-pressed to find legislation that achieves almost $30 billion in savings through such an enduring and dedicated congressional oversight effort.”
FITARA Awards set for Tech Tonic March 14
If you’d like to hear more about the latest FITARA Scorecard results, along with remarks from Rep. Connolly and presentation of MeriTalk’s FITARA Awards to individual agency CIOs, then please mark your calendars for March 14 for Tech Tonic – the next evolution of Cyber Smoke and the happiest hour in government IT. Please join us at Morton’s The Steak House on Connecticut Ave in D.C. from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. for all the fun and friends.
