USDA Service Centers: Multibillion Dollar Effort to Modernize Processes and Technology Faces Significant Risks
AIMD-98-168
Published: Aug 31, 1998. Publicly Released: Sep 30, 1998.
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Highlights
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) effort to modernize information technology (IT) at its field service centers, focusing on: (1) USDA's plans and ongoing efforts, including estimated costs, to modernize IT for its service centers; and (2) any significant risks in these plans and ongoing efforts.
Recommendations
Matter for Congressional Consideration
| Matter | Status | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Until the department resolves its critical weaknesses and institutionalizes the processes needed to manage its service center IT modernization in accordance with the mandates of the Clinger-Cohen Act, Congress may wish to limit IT funding for the USDA service centers to only that necessary to: (1) bring mission-critical systems into compliance with year 2000 requirements; (2) implement cost-effective efforts that support ongoing operations and maintenance; and (3) develop and document a concept of operations and the new mission-critical business processes necessary to provide one-stop service at all sites and integrate the service center business process reengineering project with the county-based study. | Congress limited FY2000 funding to meet Y2K requirements for USDA's Service Center initiative due to the weaknesses that GAO identified. |
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Department of Agriculture | The Secretary of Agriculture should, before investing in any effort to modernize USDA's IT beyond that necessary for making mission-critical systems year 2000 compliant and cost-effectively supporting ongoing operations and maintenance: (1) develop and document a concept of operations and the new mission-critical business processes necessary to provide one-stop service at all sites; and (2) integrate the service center business process reengineering project with the count-based study. One approach for ensuring completion of these actions would be to assign accountability to the Deputy Secretary who would need to work with the Under Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries for the service center agencies and the Chief Information Officer (CIO). |
USDA developed a concept of operations and incorporated it into the Service Center Modernization Plan of the USDA County-Based Agencies, agreed to by all the county-based agencies. The plan articulates the desired concept of operations and how USDA plans to achieve it. It also incorporates the accepted recommendations from the county-based study and documented requirements from the agencies' Business Process Reengineering projects for the Common Computing Environment (CCE) equipment being deployed. Moreover, USDA obtained an independent assessment of the IT portion of the plan in July 2000 and subsequently developed a specific "blueprint" plan for the IT modernization in December 2000, endorsed by the Administrators or Chiefs of these Agencies, that describes how the Service Center Agencies will carry out the overall IT modernization effort.
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| Department of Agriculture | The Secretary of Agriculture should hold the CIO accountable, and provide her requisite authority and responsibility for managing and implementing the service center IT modernization. |
Initially, USDA did not agree with this recommendation and said it did not intend to take action to implement it. Rather, USDA said that it was continuing to implement this initiative under its current approach of assigning leadership to a committee of agency heads. However, USDA changed its position at the end of March 2000 and strengthened management of Service Center Information Technology Modernization by assigning the CIO more responsibility for developing and coordinating the effort.
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| Department of Agriculture | The Deputy Secretary should report on a regular basis to the Secretary of Agriculture on the progress the department is making to implement each of these recommendations, and notify the Secretary when all of the identified weaknesses have been fully addressed and resolved. |
USDA's Deputy Secretary provides regular information to the Secretary regarding the progress of the initiative, including significant barriers or weaknesses. However, this action is not fully responsive because the Secretary is not being informed on the status to implement each of GAO's recommendations.
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| Department of Agriculture | The Secretary of Agriculture should direct the CIO to identify, assess, and document the risks, costs, benefits, and performance measures for each service center IT project before providing additional funding to ongoing projects and approving any new projects, and then use this information to review, control, and evaluate these projects at specific milestones of the projects' lifecycles. |
USDA developed the Service Center Modernization Plan of the USDA County-Based Agencies, which is an integrated plan of nine major projects that identifies activities and outcomes as well as risks and actions along with mitigation strategies. This was further supplemented by the development of an integrated project plan, which USDA is using to evaluate and monitor progress.
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| Department of Agriculture | The Secretary of Agriculture should direct the CIO to develop a comprehensive plan for the service center IT modernization that documents and tracks all critical milestones, dependencies among major segments, and resources needed to complete them, taking into account the resources that will be needed to make the service center agencies' systems Year 2000 compliant. |
In response to the recommendation, USDA issued a December 2000 blueprint plan for the Service Center Initiative modernization that documents critical milestones, links major segments and shows dependancies, and provides resource requirements for achieving results. This plan has been further supplemented by the development of an integrated project plan that is being used to monitor and evaluate proress.
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| Department of Agriculture | The Secretary of Agriculture should direct the CIO to develop an acquisition strategy that focuses on buying technology in manageable increments, where cost justification and performance measures are developed and documented for each increment. |
USDA's Service Center Modernization Initiative-Project Management Office (SCMI-PMO) is responsible for managing the Service Center Modernization Initiative and the integrated project plans, dependancies, and milestones. In addition, by using existing governmentwide contracts to procure individual technology components, the SCMI-PMO's acquisition strategy focuses on buying technology in management increments where costs and benefits have been defined.
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AccountabilityIT acquisitionsAgricultural programsInformation resources managementInformation systemsInformation technologyLife cycle costsManagement reengineeringPrivate sector practicesStrategic information systems planningSystems conversionsY2K