OCIO’s Commitment to Ongoing IT Modernization

Migrating older, outdated IT solutions to the cloud is a top priority at the Department of Labor. The strategy increases the cybersecurity and protection of critical data, and ensures apps are available to serve the public when needed. Cloud migration also saves taxpayer dollars and is an important measure on the latest FITARA scorecard. The department earned an overall B grade, down slightly from the overall A we earned in September 2023, based on the scorecard’s new “cloud computing” category.

What is FITARA?

The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act is released twice a year as an important tool in federal oversight, designed to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of government IT investments.

What’s new?

FITARA 17.0 considers six total categories, two of which are new, and tracks progress of four other categories that are not included in the overall score. The Government Accountability Office, which helps compile the scores for Congress, says the updates mean there’s no direct comparison between the latest scorecard and its previous version, FITARA 16.0.

About half of the 24 largest federal agencies saw their grades slip due to the new metrics, including the Department of Labor. The biggest contributing factor: the inclusion of a new cloud computing category. The new section moves beyond cloud migration as a security measure and considers procurement-related requirements included in the Office of Management and Budget’s Federal Cloud Computing Strategy for cloud contracts and service level agreements (SLAs).

Department of Labor and OCIO response

The Office of the Chief Information Officer appreciates the evolving FITARA categories to keep federal IT executives focused on the important things. The congressional oversight pushes us all to do better for America’s public and the services we provide.

OCIO is working to improve upon the OMB cloud computing requirements by ensuring we have cloud SLAs in place and standardizing cloud SLA contracts. This is an important part of making sure that the Department of Labor’s digital services are reliable and available to the public and that their data is safe.

OCIO helped the department meet or exceed average scores in FITARA’s other graded categories, maintaining As in three categories and improving cybersecurity from a C to a B. The increase in our cybersecurity score highlights our continued progress in implementing processes and tools that continuously monitor and diagnose the protection of the department’s systems, applications and data.

OCIO’s ongoing work

OCIO is committed to IT best practices, including:

• Modernizing data, apps and platforms
• Reducing costs
• Improving government services and customer experience

The next FITARA scorecard is expected in the summer of 2024.

Lisa Glufling is the director of IT governance at the U.S. Department of Labor. Follow OCIO on LinkedIn. Are you interested in joining the OCIO Team? View available positions and apply today!