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FEDERAL SECTOR REPORT
October 2004
IN THIS ISSUE
Plan Ahead for IT Investment Success
Consulting Services
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(c) 2004 by the
P2C2
Group, Inc.
PLAN AHEAD
Don't relax in
October. If you are involved in the Capital Planning and Investment
Control (CPIC) process prescribed by OMB's Circular A-11, it's time to
plan how to be successful with your future federal budgets for
information technology (IT).
Sure, we
all feel
like relaxing after the September deadlines for submitting proposed
Exhibit 53s and Exhibit 300s to the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB). But there's no time to waste: What you do next will affect your
financial health, and a good first step is to develop three "to do"
lists:
- Defensive
Actions, to avoid short-term problems and rude crises
- Tactical
Actions, to prepare for next year's federal budget cycle 2007
- Strategic
Actions, to align long-term capital investment plans with your future
vision for business, information, and technology architecture.
Once you have
your
lists, do a reality check with your management team and stakeholders:
Omissions? Right priorities? Resources for executing the actions? Of
course an even better idea is to call in a top-notch consulting
firm to facilitate the process and nail down follow-through.
Following
are
thought starters for your action lists, but adapt, add, change, and
modify to fit your situation:
Identify
what
you have promised to agency heads and OMB. You may have made
promises concerning short-term actions in Plan of Action &
Milestone (POA&M) tables, Exhibit 300s, EVMS milestones, and PART
reviews that include due dates during September - December 2004. Make
sure these happen on schedule, or you may have a very unhappy
Thanksgiving as you engage in the budget pass-back process.
Weaknesses
in
September's Exhibit 300s and 53s. You may have serious
weaknesses in your capital investment and IT budget documents that
could put you on OMB's "watch list." Weak compliance with security
requirements is a leading cause, but there are other hot spots
including performance-based contracting (acquisition strategy) and
Earned Value Management System (EVMS). Take immediate action to
strengthen any weaknesses, and you can spare yourself the burden of
taking the heat for watch-list projects.
Performance
schedules for first quarter of the new fiscal year. The performance
of major federal IT investments are subject to increased scrutiny. Make
sure your IT projects start off the new fiscal year on schedule and in
budget. Accountability for performance involves both the Agency and the
contractor(s).
GAO and
IG
reports. Did oversight agencies spot problems with your IT projects
or investment management? If so, be pro-active about resolving these
issues.
CPIC
schedule for
investments. Sound CPIC planning and management is a year-long
process, as I've written repeatedly. October is the time for all Agency
IT projects to define a year-long CPIC schedule:
- Initiate
strategic planning and improve alignment with the Enterprise
Architecture
- Improve
alignment of performance goals with output and results measures
- Replace
out-of-date alternatives analyses, and do market research for a
real-world cost benefits analysis
- Update
or replace aging risk management or information security plans
- Update
the E-Gov plan
- Fine-tune
EVMS
- Conduct
operational analysis reviews for Steady State investments
- Identify
which contracts are due for initiation or re-competition during the
fiscal year, and make sure these are aligned with performance-based
contracting and EVMS
- Plan
the full CPIC and SDLC drill for new investments.
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October is the beginning of your federal
fiscal year, and it's time to plan for IT success with:
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Defensive Actions
-
Tactical Actions
-
Strategic Actions
Don't wait for appropriations. The clock
is ticking now. |
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Investment selection
process for
current and next fiscal year. It's time to advance your Pre-Select
CPIC process--identifying business needs, considering non-technology as
well as IT solutions, conducting market research, and
prioritizing potential investments.
Performance measurement.
An
alarming number of IT investments cannot quantify what they actually
accomplish. Set up metrics, and go way beyond IT process indicators.
Simply stating 99.9% uptime is not sufficient these days. Congress
wants to know whether that system was effective in supporting the
agency mission that improved citizen health, made air transportation
more secure, or helped students get loans for education.
Partnerships. OMB
gives
funding priority to investments that use partnerships to cut costs or
improve services to citizens. However, truly effective partnerships
require months or years of planning. If you want a dynamite partnership
for an investment that will go to OMB next summer, you had better get
to work now.
Competitive Sourcing.
Much of
the government's business architecture is still rooted in the 20th
century and pre-date e-Gov and today's potential for efficiency. Either
conducting a formal A-76 study or completing an informal review has the
potential of achieving very large cost savings, which can pay for IT
modernization and e-Gov. The benefit of the A-76 paradigm is that it
forces agencies to update their business process--to define a Most
Efficient Organization (MEO). This alone can produce dramatic
breakthroughs, even if the resulting solution is not outsourced but
kept in-house within the government. Again, conducting competitive
sourcing reviews takes time, and you need to start work at the
beginning of the fiscal year.
Annual Enterprise-Level
Plan for
CPIC. Major IT investments usually bubble up on a
project-by-project basis, but agencies need an enterprise-wide budget
strategy for next summer's budget cycle. Certain tools like Balanced Scorecard methodology,
ProSight,
and Expert Choice can
help, but the process takes time, fact finding, focus, and buy-in.
Re-imaging the role of IT
in the
enterprise. You need a strategic plan that provides a
detailed vision of the target business, information, and technology
architecture. What you need is not the usual blah-blah document
iterating platitudes, but a hard-core roadmap that will redefine how
government performs its mission and serves its customers. It needs to
be specific enough to guide a long-term capital investment plan. It
needs to lay out a framework for redefining the organizational
structure and processes that IT will support. It needs to have
long-term budget goals.
Linkage to enterprise
strategic
plans, performance objectives. It is simply a portfolio of resource
vehicles that should drive the organization toward its goals and
measurable objectives. October is the time to begin laying out how IT
spending is tied to strategic plans and performance objectives.
Doing more with fewer
dollars.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Congress will
eventually be forced to deal with the budget deficit and trim overall
government spending. Some programs will be budget winners and losers in
the process, but all programs will be held accountable to squeeze
greater results and more cost efficiency out of every dollar. October
is a good time to begin figuring out how you can measurably boost your
performance. To paraphrase, to those who have (investment results) will
be added; to them who do not will be taken away.
There you have it. October is the time to get started.
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Much of your budget success with IT depends on
planning now. Market research, public-private partnerships, and
competitive sourcing studies require months of preparation.
Send your resume for confidential review.
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The
P2C2
Group is an independent consulting practice that serves the Federal
Sector in the areas of:
- Strategy
- Capital
investments and budgets
- Acquisition
- Evaluation
- CIO
program support
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HOME PAGE
Whew! It's
been a
wonderfully busy year, and a number of successful projects have come to
a successful conclusion. One of the more satisfying aspects has been
work for a broad cross-section of federal agencies and programs,
enabling the P2C2 Group to study alternative methods for managing
government programs and information technology.
Best wishes,
Jim Kendrick
4101 Denfeld
Avenue
Kensington, MD
20895
301-942-7985
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Keep in touch. Drop us a note with
comments about the newsletter and updates about what's going on in your
work in the Federal Sector.
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