Kundra Says His Office Has Saved Taxpayers $3 Billion

The federal chief information officer told a Senate panel that the Obama Administration's drive to make government IT projects more responsive to changes in technology and more reliant on private sector infrastructure had saved about $3 billion in its first five months.

Since introducing President Obama's 25-point implementation plan for reforming federal IT in December, CIO Vivek Kundra's office has reviewed 50 of the government's most troubled IT projects, canceling four and fundamentally reforming 11 others, Kundra told members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee's panel on federal financial management. "The government needs to operate much more like a nimble startup," Kundra said, "instead of investing billions of dollars in multi-year procurements," that are often outdated by the time they're implemented. The 25-point plan requires IT project managers to show significant gains for their agencies within six months. If not, they need to shut down or retool the projects.