The November 2017 Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act scorecard spells bad news for many agencies, as six of the 24 agencies evaluated dipped below their June 2017 grade and only three managed to improve their scores.
USAID still managed to claim the scorecard’s single “A” for overall performance, though it slipped from an “A+” five months ago to an “A-“ this time around. The Department of Transportation, which managed to raise it’s score to a “D+” in June, slipped down to an “F+” on the newest scorecard. The Department of Defense also joins DOT with an “F+” grade.
Agencies mostly struggled with software licensing under the Making Electronic Government Accountable By Yielding Tangible Efficiencies (MEGABYTE) Act of 2016, a relatively recent addition to scorecard evaluations. A total of 17 agencies failed their MEGABYTE evaluations. NASA, USAID, Veterans Affairs, the General Services Administration, and the Departments of Agriculture and Education were the only agencies to receive an “A” in this category.
The scorecard found marked improvements in agency chief information officer authority enhancements, a core tenant of FITARA, with six more agencies receiving an “A” from the last scorecard’s nine.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on the scorecard’s results on Nov. 15 at 2 p.m., though an official witness list for the hearing has not yet been released.
Jessie Bur covers federal IT and management.
