Obama Embraces IT Project Portfolio Management (PPM)

Although the Clinger-Cohen act was passed in 1996 that mandated a capital planning and investment control process, PPM as it’s found in the private sector is only just making its way to the federal government. As a recent memorandum from the Executive Office of the President notes, ‘the stove-piped and complex nature of the Federal enterprise has led over the years to a proliferation of duplicative and low priority investments in information technology (IT).’

The Federal Government is now focusing on maximizing the return on American taxpayers’ investment in government IT by instituting a new IT portfolio management process. Their goal is to root out waste across the Federal IT portfolio and avoid investment in low priority and duplicative IT investments.

As the Federal Chief Information Officer mentions in a blog post, over the next year agencies are required to lead agency-wide IT  portfolio reviews within their respective organizations. This will lead to targets for IT spending reductions, illustrate how investments within the IT portfolio align with the agency’s mission and business functions, establish criteria for identifying wasteful, “low-value,” or duplicative investments and improve governance and program management.

As election season starts, it will be interesting to see how the different candidates discuss cost reduction for the federal government. For our part, Daptiv recently partnered up with Winvale to help the government agencies with this effort. We hope over the next few years we can share some of our experience to help the US government’s IT portfolio reduce costs and improve business outcomes.