Politics
Federal CIO starting to come out of his shell?
It’s easy to miss some juicy news tidbits these days. Between the rate of change federal employees and contractors are in the middle of and the assorted platforms to include everything from social media like X to federal websites like SAM.gov that you need to follow, news can easily slip through the cracks.
When that happens, the Reporter’s Notebook is a place where those news cracks can be filled in.
A Federal CIO sighting
Greg Barbaccia is much different than previous federal chief information officers. His background is in security and intelligence, and probably more technical than any other CIO since Vivek Kundra.
And he has been much more cautious about getting into the federal community, including participating in media interviews. But like with many former federal CIOs, time in position seems to be changing his viewpoint.
Barbaccia recently appeared on CNBC to discuss President Donald Trump’s latest executive orders on artificial intelligence.
And today, Barbaccia posted some insights on LinkedIn about how he’d like to see agencies accelerate the digital transformation of federal processes.
“I notice a lot of the government considers itself to be ‘digital,’ but in reality, we’ve only digitized, not transformed. Sure we went [from] 0-1, but that should have just been the beginning,” Barbaccia wrote. “The signs are everywhere: Spreadsheets have replaced paper ledgers, but workflows remain unchanged. Email has replaced internal mail, yet decisions still bottleneck in inboxes. Forms are now PDFs, but they aren’t fillable, trackable or integrated. Approvals are scanned, not automated. Files are shared over email instead of through real-time collaboration tools.”
Greg Barbaccia is the new federal CIO.
Barbaccia said the goal now must be to modernize not just the technology and systems, but more importantly improve how the work is done.
He wrote that this means:
- Automating repetitive tasks
- Making data actionable, not just stored
- Enabling faster, more collaborative decision-making
- Adapting behaviors, not just adopting tools
“If we’ve only changed the medium and not the actual process then transformation hasn’t occurred. It’s not enough to change the platform. You have to change the practice. Stay tuned,” he wrote
The “stay tuned” is a most interesting tease for what initiatives and policies are on the horizon.
Earlier this year, Barbaccia initiated a website consolidation and modernization effort, and he teamed with the Office of Federal Procurement Policy and the General Services Administration to begin to address software license consolidation.
Barbaccia’s post generated plenty of positive feedback.
Mark Forman, the former administrator for IT and E-Government, the pre-cursor to the federal CIO during the Bush administration, said he agreed with what Barbaccia wrote.
“I would add using objectives and key results that reflect mission outcomes as opposed to current approaches that track activities completed or systems/apps deployed. This requires busting silos and I appreciate Greg moving that forward,” Forman wrote.
Don Bauer, the former chief technology officer at the State Department’s Bureau of Global Talent Management, said a big challenge he faced was operational necessities and budget constraints, which made the transformation process more incremental and slower.
“Working on the airplane while flying it has its challenges, and getting enough resources to build better while absorbing the tremendous overhead of operating the as-is, can be a no-win situation. Until the appropriators understand this, we have a LONG way to go…,” he wrote.
And Christopher Logan, a former advisor at OMB on technology modernization and a former member of the U.S. Digital Service, said he’d like to see OMB create the incentives and issue guidance to accelerate agency digital transformation.
Hopefully, with his LinkedIn post, Barbaccia is laying the groundwork to give industry and agencies a heads-up of where the administration is heading when it comes to its technology priorities.
Governmentwide performance tracking system
One new OMB technology priority that’s potentially under development is a new dashboard of sorts called the “Integrated Agency 360 Platform for Federal Performance and Resource Optimization.”
OMB released a request for information on July 8 seeking commercial technology to create this new platform. Feedback was due July 18.
OMB says the RFI is “to identify commercial solutions for an Integrated Agency 360 Platform. This platform is envisioned to provide a timely, comprehensive view of federal agency operations, investments and outcomes. The primary objective is to empower federal leadership with actionable insights, enabling them to connect strategic objectives, program performance and resource allocation. This will ensure that public funds are utilized effectively and aligned with the highest priorities, delivering measurable results.”
The initial focus of the 360 platform is for civilian agencies only, with the Department of the Treasury, GSA and the Office of Personnel Management among the first pilot participants.
OMB says each agency will implement a version of the software and the White House would have access to all agency data.
The system itself includes nine broad capabilities including organizational visibility, cross-functional integration and workflow-embedded decision tools.
A former OMB official said the idea of a governmentwide dashboard and agency specific platforms are great, but finding the right audiences and use cases for them may prove more difficult. And, of course, this effort would have been even more valuable if OMB hadn’t closed down its performance management team.
“Many agencies have versions of this tailored to their own needs, as laid out in the OMB memo from 2023 and through the continued implementation of the requirements of the Government Performance and Results Act Modernization Act,” said the former official, who requested anonymity because they still do business with the government. “It’s logical that OMB would be interested in something that both sets a standard and helps them get a window. Collecting, organizing and displaying the data is hard, but not at all the hardest part. The much harder part is implementing feedback loops for the data. When you see it, what do you do? Do the customers actually use it? Do they respond? Do they take action? Can they? How often do they consider?”
The former official added that while they are skeptical about the ability to use predictive insights and triggering actions as part of the workflow embedded decision tools, the hope is that a new system like this would spur new thinking, prioritization and decision making.
“Whether you can embed that in the tool itself seems more magical given all the many compliance requirements layered on government actions,” the source said.
An email to OMB seeking any more details on its plans for the Integrated Agency 360 Platform was not immediately returned.
Should OMB find enough interest from vendors, it says it may issue a commercial solutions opening (CSO) to procure the platform. It gave no timeline for when this may happen.
Dusting off my soap box
Let me get my soap box out for a minute – I mean, it’s been a several years since I brought this one out, so it may be a little dusty. If the Trump administration is truly serious about fixing federal acquisition, one easy change would be to let anyone see the procurement actions agencies are posting on GSA Advantage and through the schedules program.
As has been the case for more than 30 years, unless you are a schedules holder, there is no way to see what agencies are buying. So for companies deciding whether to get into the federal market — which the White House says is one of its goals to expand the industrial base — they can review SAM.gov postings to understand what and how agencies are buying. But they have no insights into the schedules program or any other governmentwide or multiple award acquisition contract. That means out of the $755 billion spent on federal acquisition in fiscal 2024, these companies have little to no insight into more than $72 billion that went through the schedules run by the GSA and the Veterans Affairs Department.
Here’s the latest example of why GSA should open up the schedules and GWACs for anyone to view.
Back in late May, GSA released an RFI to modernize its overall marketplace, including the Advantage platform.
“GSAAdvantage.gov does not currently operate as a fully modernized e-commerce environment, and is often used as a market research tool, rather than an e-commerce site,” the agency wrote in the RFI, posted only on E-Buy. “Transactions are routed through legacy systems (e.g., Electronic Data Interchange), and buyers often encounter common issues such as website errors such as broken links and incorrect information, incomplete product descriptions and details (i.e. missing product photos), outdated catalogs listing unavailable or obsolete items, difficult and unintuitive website navigation and limited search functions and non-relevant item search results.”
The RFI, which Federal News Network obtained, detailed how “GSA aims to transform its marketplace, including GSAAdvantage.gov, into a modern, discovery-focused platform that matches commercial online shopping experiences.”
Key focus areas include:
- Contracting vehicle display and award support
- Buyer experience modernization
- Comprehensive marketplace search
- Vendor e-commerce enhancement
- Compliance and data integrity
GSA asked 29 questions and included an open-ended opportunity for vendors to provide insights or feedback. The issue here is GSA could only receive feedback from known vendors.
GSA Advantage is need of some serious improvements. GSA has focused on its commercial services platform for much of the last five years as a way to capture the e-commerce spending across government and hasn’t put the resources into bringing Advantage into the modern era.
You’d think agencies would want to cast a much wider net when they’re looking for new ideas, but the reason GSA hasn’t opened up E-Buy and other firewalled acquisition vehicles is because their agency customers are against it. They believe it would lead to all sorts of unsolicited proposals or emails or something.
Back in 2019, GSA launched an E-Buy Open pilot as way to test the waters of transparency, but that never really got a lot of traction.
It’s time to revisit that concept of opening up E-Buy, GSA Advantage and every other GWAC/MAC to a broader audience in the name of transparency, acquisition reform and industrial base expansion.
The post Federal CIO starting to come out of his shell? first appeared on Federal News Network.
