Federal agencies seeking Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) dollars need to prove how the money will improve mission delivery, according to Jessie Posilkin, acting executive director of the General Services Administration’s TMF.
Speaking Tuesday at MeriTalk’s Shift Happens event in Washington, D.C., Posilkin said agencies need to tie modernization projects to measurable outcomes increasingly.
“I think the biggest gap … is looking at outcomes,” Posilkin said. “Projects that describe a technology without any sort of outcome associated with it are frankly not worth the time, and often make clear to us that there’s also a gap in the product team building it.”
Desired outcomes, she said, can include faster services, improved employee productivity, and better customer experiences.
Her comments came the week after TMF launched a targeted call for proposals focused on generative artificial intelligence (AI) and permitting modernization.
Agencies have until July 24 to submit initial project proposals for consideration in this funding round, but earlier submissions are encouraged to support expedited review.
The call for proposals is moving quickly out of necessity. Absent congressional action to extend TMF’s investment authority, Sept. 30 will mark the end of the fund’s ability to approve new modernization projects. However, the fund will continue overseeing its existing portfolio of investments.
Last month, Posilkin said the TMF has more than $200 million left to invest in technology modernization projects this year.
In evaluating project proposals, Posilkin said the fund is looking for projects that clearly demonstrate how they will improve government operations or public services.
“We still need to see you investing in those kinds of outcomes that would make either your citizens’ or, equally importantly, your staff’s lives better as well,” Posilkin said. “You would actually want to see something get faster as a result, not just move a paper process onto digital.”
“We know that the pressure is that everyone wants to see legacy systems deprecated. We do too,” she said. “But just because you’ve deprecated a legacy system, if you have moved onto a new system that is equally mediocre, I don’t think anyone in the public has won, and certainly Congress has not gotten their investment’s worth.”
Posilkin said TMF is looking for “short delivery sprints” from agencies that are reporting to the fund on a monthly basis.
“We’re looking for what value has been delivered in that time,” Posilkin explained. “What features are actually being used? What time end-to-end time savings have you found? … What is the citizen service that is better because of the work that you’ve done over the past quarter, not the past four years, but the past quarter or two?”
As examples, Posilkin highlighted recent demos, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service effort to improve the performance of beta.weather.gov.
She also pointed to a Department of Veterans Affairs effort to modernize thousands of agency forms, saying both projects have demonstrated measurable improvements through user testing and faster delivery.
Bart Larango, federal industry advisor for public sector at Splunk, echoed the need to evaluate modernization efforts based on mission impact rather than technology alone.
“If we lead with outcomes instead of capability first and back into that, that’s I think where we have to start with all of the things, particularly in the federal space,” Larango said.
Posilkin added that agencies also need to broaden how they calculate the value of modernization projects.
She highlighted a Department of Labor effort to streamline labor certification forms, saying the agency justified the investment by accounting not only for digital improvements but also reductions in paper, storage, postage, trucking, and staff processing costs.
“They didn’t just say, ‘We’re going to move a bad form online. But we’re also going to look at what those trucking costs are, and how we think about that staff,’” Posilkin said.
“I think they maybe saved another million dollars on trucking alone,” she added.