Browsing: Information Technology

Many are the ways in which the government loses money to contractors, but by failing to answer a survey? That’s essentially what happened at the Housing and Urban Development Department, which cost taxpayers more than $267,000 because some of its managers didn’t bother filling out customer satisfaction questionnaires from tech giant Hewlett-Packard. Here’s the story, according to the department’s inspector general: Under the terms of a 2005 information technology contract, HP has to ask managers in HUD’s Office of the Chief Information Officer every six months how happy they are with the company’s work. If the survey response rate falls below 50 percent, Hewlett-Packard…

Consolidating data centers on the Department of Homeland Security’s St. Elizabeths campus won’t be a problem; there are none. There will, however, be a centralized location for servers in the campus’ information technology operations center, DHS official Mark Hamilton said during an industry day Thursday. Two off-campus data centers, DHS 1 and 2, will house the data. The General Services Administration hosted the event to field questions about the $2.63 billion contract to install, test and operate a secure network throughout the future DHS headquarters.  Here are some other take-aways from the event:   – Federal employees and contractors are really going to use HSPD12 identification cards to access…

Most federal executives exceed agency security requirements when using laptops and other devices inside the office but are less likely to do so while teleworking, according to a study released Tuesday by the Government Business Council.    The survey of 232 executives, mostly in operations, found that 88 percent lock their computer screens when they’re away, and 77 percent only use secure network connections when at work. Outside the office, only 52 percent said they used these security measures. Overall, 97 percent said their agencies require at least a password or some form of authentication when accessing work on an agency-issued…

The Office of Management and Budget says hundreds of millions of dollars in budget reductions are expected to come from the restructuring or cancelation of selected financial system modernization projects. OMB acting director Jeffrey Zients and controller Danny Werfel will announce today the fate of financial system modernization projects that were halted for review last month.   In August, a total of 26 IT projects were identified as “high risk” and subjected to a thorough review before moving forward. Improvement plans are being developed, and they should include details of projects risks, new contractor performance metrics and more rigorous project…

The Office of Management and Budget is going to announce today that it’s halting all financial systems modernization projects across the government. That means 30 projects worth $20 billion are now effectively on hold until OMB can come up with a way to improve the procurement process in this area. The most well-known failure in this area is the Veterans Affairs Department’s CoreFLS project (since replaced by a new program called FLITE that hasn’t gone much better). The department has spent a total of about $300 million on this boondoggle over 10 years and has seen no tangible benefits. Jeff…