Effect of OMB tech freeze unknown, officials say
The Office of Management and Budget's review of some large-scale technology projects in agencies slated for the Homeland Security Department is moving slowly, and it's too soon to know how the funding freeze imposed in July will affect agencies' missions, senior government officials said Tuesday at a House hearing. OMB is looking at those projects to decide whether they should be allowed to proceed or be halted altogether.
Mark Forman, the administration's e-government chief and leader of the technology review, said, "Most of the work…is just beginning." Forman didn't give members of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Technology Procurement Policy a deadline for the review's completion. When the administration ordered the freeze on $1.4 billion worth of new technology projects, Forman said the review would proceed expeditiously.
The General Accounting Office found that OMB hasn't taken any action on the security agencies' affected projects because OMB officials haven't finished reviewing them, according to Joel Willemssen, GAO's managing director for information technology issues. In addition, Willemssen said that OMB officials stated they're not tracking whether agencies have halted spending or altered their plans as a result of the freeze. The freeze affects only new investments in technology infrastructure-data networks, for example-and administrative management systems worth more than $500,000.
The freeze hasn't kept some large, expensive projects from moving forward. The Transportation Security Agency last month awarded a $1 billion contract to Unisys Corp. for a new technology infrastructure and network. The Coast Guard and the Secret Service have also gone ahead with major projects. OMB granted the agencies a special "emergency" exemption from the freeze. Willemssen said GAO hadn't found that the agencies' actions had any negative effects on OMB's broad review.
TSA Chief Information Officer Patrick Schambach said the agency probably would be further along in its contract without the administrative hold-up. But he also said that he agreed with the strategy of reviewing basic infrastructure projects at TSA and other likely Homeland Security agencies to avoid creating redundant systems.
Woody Hall, the Customs Service CIO, told lawmakers that although his agency's most significant technology venture is not restricted by the review, Customs officials will submit their spending plans to OMB before they begin the next major phase of work. Hall said the system, a massive cargo information database, could serve as "the information technology platform for border security." Customs is working on the system along with the Transportation, Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments and the Immigration and Naturalization Service to allow the agencies to share data about imported and exported goods for use in accomplishing their missions.
The officials applauded OMB's effort to determine which technology projects should be continued and which should be halted. But subcommittee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., raised concerns on behalf of some of his constituents-large government technology contractors in Northern Virginia-that the freeze has affected their business. Davis said he's heard from some companies that have had to fire employees because the work they thought they had won fell through as a result of the freeze. Davis asked a representative from an information technology lobbying group to find some examples of companies that had lost business because of the freeze and to submit that information to the subcommittee.
The subcommittee also made some effort to gauge how the freeze is affecting agencies not moving into the proposed Homeland Security Department. Sandra Bates, commissioner of the General Services Administration's Federal Technology Service, testified that the freeze had no significant impact on her agency, which manages technology contracts for nearly every government organization. "Most of the business we do…falls outside the parameters of OMB's direction to the designated Homeland Security agencies," Bates said, noting that FTS' largest customer is the Defense Department, which is not part of the OMB review.