Thompson/Lieberman
Send Letters to 24 Agencies to Determine if They are Complying With
Information Technology Law
(Washington,
DC) -- Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Fred
Thompson (R-TN) and Ranking Member Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) have
sent individual letters to 24 federal agency heads asking them
to detail their agency’s efforts to comply with the
Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996. The letters are in response to
concerns about how agencies are designing and implementing
processes for information technology capital planning,
performance, acquisition, and management.
Agencies
continue to suffer numerous information technology failures. For
example, within the last year, the cost for an FBI
fingerprint-matching system increased from $470 million to $640
million and the cost for the Justice Department’s National
Crime Information Center more than doubled to $184 million. In
1996, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) abandoned its Tax
Systems Modernization project after spending $3.3 billion.
The
Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs played a large role in
the passage of the Clinger-Cohen Act, which requires agencies to
integrate their business, technical and budget processes and to
report to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) information
technology programs that have significantly deviated from their
cost, performance and schedule goals.
"Each
year we get reports from agencies, the media and GAO detailing
how many federal information technology programs are mismanaged.
We passed the Clinger-Cohen Act to remedy these problems and now
we will be persistent in holding agency heads accountable for
compliance with this law," said Thompson.
"I
look forward to learning for the first time how the
Clinger-Cohen Act is really working," Lieberman said.
"Since Congress passed legislation four years ago to
address some serious shortcomings, we need to follow-up to
ensure those reforms are being implemented."
As
part of their oversight agenda, Senators Thompson and Lieberman
developed a series of questions to ascertain the status of the
Clinger-Cohen Act compliance throughout the Executive branch.
The letters include questions on:
-
Effective use of government Chief
Information Officers
-
Agency benefits from capital planning and
investment control processes
-
Managing information technology for overall
performance and results
-
Impact on business processes
-
Agency acquisition of information technology
click on an agency below to see the letter