The Federal IT COST Commission

What is the Federal Commission on IT Cost, Opportunity, Strategy, and Transparency?

 

The Federal IT COST Commission is the first-ever joint public/private sector initiative focused on maximizing the value of the government’s technology investments through transparency into spending. This CIO advisory council is comprised of the world’s largest enterprise organizations and Federal CIOs, led by the TBM Council. This initiative aims to leverage private sector best practices in technology cost management and apply them to the Federal setting to ensure taxpayer money is being used as efficiently as possible.

As part of this effort, the Commission will define a set of best practices and standards for Federal CIOs to measure and communicate the cost of infrastructure, applications, projects, and IT services.

To learn more about the IT COST Commission, here are some Frequently Asked Questions.

On the heels of the recently distributed draft recommendations for FITARA implementation, OMB is eager to support the work being done by the TBM Council. We believe that the Federal IT COST Commission can give the taxpayers a better return on their investment while simultaneously providing Congress and the Administration with better insight into the value provided by technology. It’s a win-win.

The TBM Council was founded to provide IT leaders with the standards, education, and collaboration they needed to run IT more like a business. It is this mission that continues to drive us today and motivated our decision to establish the Federal IT COST Commission. The board of directors and I are united in the belief that it’s our duty to support our counterparts in the Federal government. We’re privileged to do this work and excited to get started.

We realize that commercial and Federal CIOs approach technology cost accounting and management very differently. However, there are key private sector learnings that can be applied to the federal space that we believe will have a substantive, lasting impact on the way public sector CIO manage and communicate the value of their technology investments.