There is no doubt the federal government’s budgetary climate is chilly. The national debt is growing at a rapid pace largely because of mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, the latter two programs suffering from high levels of improper payments.
The government’s need for sound financial systems to accurately account for every penny spent is crystal clear. However, in the name of sound financial management, the Office of Management and Budget has frozen approximately 30 financial system modernization projects worth $20 billion, regardless of the success of the projects to date, until it can review each and every one of them.
Call us crazy, but shouldn’t OMB have completed the reviews before those proverbial horses left the budgetary barn? And why halt the programs now, in medias res, just as the government is in dire need of modern financial systems? Isn’t that…ironic?
OMB claims the financial projects are wasting billions (a little too ironic?) and new contracts and task orders can’t be awarded until OMB approves agencies’ plans to cut project cost and schedule while also ensuring the effectiveness of the projects.
PSC supports terminating or halting projects that are clearly not working, but it is not clear that’s what is happening here. Unlike the Veterans Affairs Department’s famous work stoppage of IT programs deemed failing, nowhere in OMB Director Peter Orszag’s June 28 memo is there an indication individual project performance would be factored into what programs are paused. In fact there is no evidence here that such a strategic assessment of non-performance has taken place on any of the projects. Rather, OMB is asking agencies to “self-assess” the status of the projects as part of their OMB submissions.
By failing to be strategic in its moratorium, OMB could actually be throwing well-performing projects off course. Programs that were on time and on budget to deliver leading edge technologies could now lag behind schedule, exceed budgeted costs and deliver obsolete systems because of the OMB review to ensure they’re on time, on budget and technologically relevant.
Seriously folks, isn’t there a mid-1990s Alanis Morissette song about this?
