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IT Reform at the Small Business Administration
Posted By Paul Christy
With over 100 offices around the United States, SBA is a diffuse agency focused on supporting America’s small business owners. My office focuses on providing efficient, agile technology support to this mission. The 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management is helping to guide our IT strategy by focusing on cloud computing, modular development, and rigorous oversight. I am committed to bringing the benefits of IT Reform to SBA, and at the end of six months, I am very proud of what we have accomplished.
One way that we have been working toward reform is by embracing cloud computing. We are currently moving our new public-facing innovation portal to a cloud hosting system. This will allow for greater scalability, increased uptime, and lower costs. We are also preparing to move our internal Human Resources Training system to the cloud. This “Cloud First” policy extends to new ventures as well – our new Management and Technical Assistance line of business will be developed and implemented on a cloud system.
We held our first agency TechStat session on March 30th in which we evaluated the issues with our Identity and Access Management investment. We were able to identify a clear path forward by focusing on the investment’s governance and project management issues. We concluded that a “Tiger Team” should be formed in order to oversee the first round of deliverables. I am confident that bringing key stakeholders together in a focused session has allowed us to turn this project around. I am currently working to identify other investments that might also benefit from the scrutiny of the TechStat process.
Looking forward, there’s a lot to be excited about in the next 12 months of IT Reform at SBA. We have been particularly focused on our data center consolidation plan, which exemplifies the IT Reform principle of streamlining IT Operations. Stay tuned as we continue to push forward on transforming IT at SBA and across the Federal Government.
Paul Christy is the Chief Information Officer at the Small Business Administration.
