From: FierceGovernmentIT
By Molly Bernhart Walker
The General Services Administration plans to restructure information technology oversight and responsibilities to be centralized under its headquarters chief information officer, according to Dan Tangherlini, acting administrator of GSA.
“This week, I’ll be notifying Congress of my intent to consolidate all information technology personnel, budgets and systems under the CIO,” said Tangherlini during Sept. 12 testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
The decision is the result of IT inefficiency findings uncovered in the agency’s top-down review of waste and abuse following a conference spending scandal that led to Administrator Martha Johnson’s resignation in April. Since taking the post, Tangherlini says he has refocused GSA on its core mission and responsible spending.
“The consolidation of the CIO functions provides an opportunity to improve the performance and cost-effectiveness of GSA’s IT portfolio,” he said. Up until now, the CIO has had limited authority over project development, budgets and performance, he added.
“By creating a central authority for the development and maintenance of information systems, GSA will streamline its IT investments, while also increasing access to agency data,” said Tangherlini.
The agency is also consolidating human resource functions under its chief people officer, he said. This will, “increase visibility into hiring decisions and increase efficiencies by eliminating current redundancy within the various organizations within GSA,” he added.
Tangherlini said the cumulative savings resulting from changes implemented by GSA over the past 5 months–primarily centered around increased conference oversight–total $11 million.
Brian Miller, inspector general of GSA, told the committee his office continues to investigate conferences and contracting practices. They’re currently auditing a handful of events held between October 2011 and April 2012.
“We feel confident that the recommendations we have identified thus far will be remedied with the changes acting administrator Tangherlini has begun to implement,” said Miller.
For more: – go to the hearing page (includes archived webcast and prepared testimony)
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