Technology Business Management: OMB and GSA Must Increase Efforts to Lead Federal Adoption

What GAO found

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and General Services Administration (GSA) are taking steps to lead the adoption of Technology Business Management across government, but progress and results have been limited.

• OMB’s original 2017 plan for government-wide adoption required agencies to report IT spending using the first two tier categories. OMB continued to require reporting of these two tiers in subsequent plans. However, five years after initial planning, OMB had not expanded the requirement to include the remaining taxonomies (layers 3 and 4 categories and all layer subcategories) (Fig. ).

The extent to which the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) plans address the elements of the Technology Business Management Taxonomy Version 3.0

• OMB and GSA have assisted government agencies in implementing the Technology Business Management Framework, including by developing implementation guidance and maturity model assessment tools. However, OMB and GSA have not assessed the institution’s maturity. Moreover, they did not first analyze the quality of the institutional data reported in his two tiers.
• OMB and GSA have released agency-reported data on federal IT dashboards (Layers 1 and 2), but did not disclose that approximately $31 billion was excluded from investments in fiscal 2021. Hmm. Additionally, they did not analyze his fiscal 2022 data discrepancies nor mention the use of benchmarks that would allow spending comparisons with organizations of similar size or mission.

OMB and GSA officials argue that implementing technology business management remains a priority. Nevertheless, uncertainty will cloud agency efforts until OMB establishes a documented plan and agency expectations for the rest of the taxonomy. Moreover, the continued lack of OMB direction may prevent the federal government from fully achieving its intended benefits, such as optimizing IT spending.

Why GAO did this study

Governments have faced long-standing challenges in IT management and spending transparency. In 2017, OMB announced its intention to improve insight into IT spending by adopting the Technology Business Management Council’s framework across government.

This framework is a standard taxonomy organized into four layers (cost pools, IT towers, products and services, and business units and functions) intended to present an organization’s total IT spending from different perspectives. provide. These four layers consist of spending categories and subcategories.

GAO was asked to report on the implementation of Technology Business Management. The purpose of the GAO was to identify the progress OMB and GSA had made in government-wide recruitment efforts. To do so, GAO analyzed the plan and compared it to relevant standards, such as the Technology Business Management Council’s guidance. We also analyzed data reported by agencies for 2021 and 2022 and interviewed relevant officials.