Breaking down the first year of PortfolioStat

Emily Jarvis

12 years ago

Last March the Office of Management and Budget unveiled PortfolioStat. The goal was simple, help agencies save time, money and resources by giving them a tool to asses their portfolio management process.

Andrew McMahon is a Senior Policy Advisor at OMB. He oversees PortfolioStat. McMahon was a panelist at an AFCEA Bethesda event that the DorobekINSIDER’s Chris Dorobek moderated.

McMahon says PortfolioState, “is a tool for agencies to assess their IT portfolios to identify duplicative programs, systems, and resources. The tool will be re-evaluated annually to adapt to budget and technology changes has already identified more than $2.5 billion in potential IT savings in its first year. In its second year, PortfolioStat 2.0 will incorporate best practices, integrate the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) and streamline agency reporting requirements.”

First Run of PortfolioStat

“Last year there was a heavier focus on commodity IT rather than a broader set of management initiatives within an agency as pertains to technology. From a results standpoint agencies did a fabulous job, they were able to create huge savings through commodity IT consolidation which numbered about 100 consolidations across agencies. So far this year we’ve saved $300 million dollars so we are ahead of our goal,” said McMahon.

Where To Take PortfolioStat Next?

“Once we finished the actual process last year and sat down with the CIO Council at a boot camp we did quiet a few internal discussions about where we think we need to go with the initiative. Right off the bat the initiative took on a lot of the processes that our office normally oversees. We are not a huge office so overseeing $80 billion in tech budgets is quiet a hurdle. PortfolioStat allowed us to provide a tool back to agencies, it also allowed us to bring decision makers to the table,” said McMahon.

Lessons Learned

“We really learned quickly that we needed to fold data center consolidation into PortfolioStat. We want to see data center optimization and virtualization. We weren’t seeing the full picture when we said close X number of data centers. We also pulled in cybersecurity and Digital Government Strategy metrics and analytics. That move will really expand the analytical capabilities around PortfolioStat,” said McMahon.

Everyone in the Same Room

“PortfolioStat is a very collaborative process. It is a good opportunity for the CIO and IT community at an agency to raise issues with the Deputy Secretary. It gets everyone in the same room. From the OMB perspective it is really important to have the budget side in the room because then we can start to show how powerful tech is from a productivity and innovative standpoint,” said McMahon.

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