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GAO primes Senators on IT issues for next administration

Report focuses on 7 high priority issues, 26 questions

Federal News Network Staff

December 30, 2008 6:59 pm

3 min read

By Jason Miller
Executive Editor
FederalNewsRadio

The Senate plans on holding confirmation hearings of the next attorney general and secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs during the second week of January. And among the questions Senators will ask Eric Holder, the attorney general nominee, and Gen. Eric Shinseki, the VA secretary nominee, undoubtedly will be about cybersecurity, information technology management and their thoughts on how technology would improve the efficiency of their agencies.

“Technology has so transformed how we do business,” says Joel Willemssen, the Government Accountability’s director of IT issues. “The government is delivering services much differently than what we used to do.”

Willemssen authored a section on technology issues and questions in GAO’s recent guidance for Senators, Eliciting Nominees’ Views on Management Challenges within Agencies and across Government. GAO issued the report in preparation for confirmation hearings.

“We had a technology section in previous reports, but it was more brief,” he says. “This reflects continuing issues and expands on issues. It also discusses emerging issues. The earlier report was more limited in the kinds of questions we suggested.”

The current IT guidance lays out several areas in need of immediate attention:

Managing IT to achieve benefits and control costs;
Working with the private sector and other levels of government to protect cyber critical infrastructure;
Developing and implementing well-defined modernization blueprints;
Ensuring privacy protections in a post-9/11 environment;
Ensuring citizen access to government information;
Strengthening controls to ensure identity protection;
Strengthening information security controls;
Furthering the exchange of electronic patient health information.

“We selected them based on our collective judgment and what we’ve seen and where the biggest risks are,” Willemssen says. “Security and privacy always are the most prominent as more and more data of individuals are more accessible to perpetrators. Security and privacy are paramount to what federal agencies are doing, especially if we want to deliver services in a more effective manner.”

GAO also developed 26 questions that Senators should consider asking during the confirmation process.

Willemssen says they may not ask all 26, but there are some that apply to every agency.

“The questions Congress should ask should be based on the facts and circumstances of a particular agency,” he says. “Let’s say the one being nominated is for the IRS commissioner. You may want to pose a lot of questions about their Business Systems Modernization project and where they are and what benefits are they receiving.”

Willemssen says the goal of the guidance is not to just give Senators suggestions on the most pressing management issues, but also to make sure management in general remains a priority.

“Senior managers need to be aware of how these enabling technologies deliver services to citizens and taxpayers,” he says. “This is not just a technology issue. We can see ways to do that that previously were not there.”

On the Web:

FederalNewsRadio – Transition going smoothly, so far

FederalNewsRadio – Faster, faster: speeding the confirmation process

GAO – Eliciting Nominees’ Views on Management Challenges within Agencies and across Governments