Portfolio Stat – Can it help your agency save money, innovate?

The six-month old program is starting to get some traction. So can Portfolio Stat and can it really make a difference at your agency?

Andrew McMahon is a senior advisor at the Office of Management and Budget and PortfolioStat lead. He was a panelist at the October Affirm breakfast moderated by the DorobekINSIDER’s Chris Dorobek.

He started off by explaining how Portfolio Stat works.

Definition: Portfolio Stat is a tool for agencies to access the maturity of their IT portfolio management processes. The program grew from a number of earlier initiatives like TechState, Data Center Consolidation and a memo concerning CIO’s authority.

How it Works: “The execution phase of PortfolioStat – happened over the summer. We had agencies do quite a bit of work around beta call, developing draft and final plans, and then OMB did a lot of analysis. We came together for individual meetings with each of the 26 agencies throughout the month of July and a little bit into August,” said McMahon.

At the end of August, the agencies submitted a final plan so we’re really at the end of phase one. The last couple months we’ve gone through the plans, and a lot of the initiatives that agencies are kind of undertaking over the next three years. We have one more deliverable in February that asks agencies to look at lessons learned, but for this year’s process we’re really at the tail end.

Response: McMahon said,”I think that we’ve been seeing a really good response to the process overall. I think that plays a lot into the fact that it wasn’t a one size fits all. It was to tailor and provide data, let us show you what we are seeing and then really take some steps to what you as the leaders of the organization think are the best ways for you to improve. What are the gaps of weaknesses and how can you fill those gaps of weaknesses.”

I think that really helps from a standpoint of a responsibility of ownership. They felt that they own the process, and we were there to provide insights, help analyze the data they provided and really provide any cover that they may need down the line if things were going to become challenging from the execution standpoint.