A major piece of IT acquisition reform legislation called the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (“FITARA”), on which we have previously reported, was included in version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 (“NDAA FY 15”) passed by the House on December 4, 2014, along with other significant IT reform provisions related to open systems requirements for the Department of Defense (“DoD”).
The FITARA portion of the bill includes provisions that would require the federal government to:
- empower Chief Information Officers (“CIOs”) and prevent the CIO from delegating the duty of reviewing IT contracts before the agency enters into the contract;
- provide a publicly available list for each major information technology investment, both new and existing, that lists information specified in forthcoming investment evaluation guidance;
- engage in a detailed review of high-risk information technology investments to identify problems;
- inventory all information technology;
- implement a federal data center consolidation initiative, which will include publicized goals regarding cost savings and optimization improvements to be achieved as a result of the initiative, and must be performed consistent with federal guidelines on cloud computing and cybersecurity such as FedRAMP and NIST guidelines;
- expand the use of specialized IT acquisition experts;
- develop a federal strategic sourcing initiative to be developed by GSA, which will allow for the use of governmentwide user license agreements.
Additional provisions require the use of open and modular strategies by the DoD, including the following requirements
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