Federal Information Technology Shared Services Strategy

Citation

Office of Management and Budget, Federal Information Technology Shared Services Strategy (May 2, 2012) (full-text).

Overview

This document sets forth a strategy (also called the Shared-First strategy) to help federal agencies (1) improve return on investment across the agency's IT portfolio, (2) close productivity gaps by implementing integrated governance processes and innovative IT service solutions, and (3) increase communications with stakeholders to ensure transparency, accountability, and collaboration in the full life cycle of IT shared services. To facilitate these improvements, the strategy provides definitions, concepts, and critical success factors to be considered when implementing IT shared services; an implementation strategy; and a federal governance structure to support federal agencies' shared services development and implementation efforts.

This strategy is part of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) 25-Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management, which seeks to increase return on investment, eliminate waste and duplication, and improve the effectiveness of IT solutions.

The "Shared-First" approach will:

• Improve return on investment across the agency's entire IT portfolio through the coordinated use of TechStat program reviews; PortfolioStat investment reviews; and the consolidation of commodity IT systems, services, and related contracts.
• Close productivity gaps by implementing integrated governance processes and innovative IT service solutions at the program, bureau and agency levels. Agency implementation is to be consistent with guidance contained in the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy; the Digital Government Strategy, and the The Common Approach to Federal Enterprise Architecture.
• Increase communications with stakeholders as shared service managing partners, customers, and providers work together to ensure transparency, accountability, and ongoing collaboration in the full lifecycle of intra- and inter-agency IT shared service activities. Collaboration resources that are available to support this are CIO.gov, ITDashboard.gov, Performance.gov, and BusinessUSA.gov.