The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report this week that cost savings generated by Federal agency IT projects funded by the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) have been relatively small thus far, but could grow much larger as some of those projects proceed further.
The report issued on Dec. 12 looks at awards provided by TMF from the program’s inception through February of this year. During that time, TMF received congressional appropriations of $1.23 billion, and issued funding awards totaling $636 million for 37 projects proposed by agencies, GAO reckoned.
Breaking down that list of 37 projects, GAO found that eight of the projects have yielded cost savings to agencies of $14.8 million, while another five of the projects expect to generate cost savings totaling $2.6 million.
Another 13 of the projects do not anticipate to generate any cost savings at all, the agency said.
The wild card for substantial cost savings from TMF-funded projects, GAO said, are a group of 16 projects that anticipate generating $738 million of cost savings.
GAO’s latest analysis springs from a congressional requirement to report on TMF biennially on topics including cost savings from funded projects, and the extent to which agencies have used full and open competition for projects involving acquisitions of custom-developed IT.
