Top 5 current priorities of IT industry
leaders and decision makers
JO S EPH KR A U S is driving a number of IT efforts to improve his
business—the federal government. Kraus is the CIO of the Government
Accountability Office, the leading watchdog agency. Before joining GAO in late
2006, he consulted with CIOs in the private and public sectors and previously
served as the CIO for Intelsat, a satellite telecommunications company.
You Tube channel to disseminate
our work to Congress and the
American public. Initially, I was
concerned about our work force’s
reaction to adopting these tools
but have found that many are
quite adept at using them.
■ Increase mobility
More than 95 percent of our staff
is on secure laptops with telework
agreements. If necessary, we can
support over 80 percent of the
work force working remotely. Our
latest rollout, completed at the
end of 2008, includes encrypted
and wireless laptop tools to ensure
that information collected from
other federal agencies remains
secure. In addition, we are using
handheld technologies to provide
a secure mobile environment.
Over the past five years, the
number of video conferencing
meetings has been increasing
nearly 50 percent per year. This
helps us bring down travel costs
and improve collaboration. We are
developing a baseline carbon footprint as part of our green program
and will demonstrate further savings by expanding “telepresence.”
USDA’s National Finance Center
for payroll services. We are looking
at other common federal services,
including travel and learning management.
■ Build out enterprise
We intend to modernize our cur- We intend to modernize our cur- We intend to modernize our cur
rent audit infrastructure and tools
to enhance the way we deliver
results with great savings in how
we conduct business. The goal
is to revolutionize how we do
knowledge management at GAO.
The architecture is based mainly
around off-the-shelf technologies
connected through a service bus.
We plan to acquire, develop and
deploy in phases over the next
three years.
■ Adopt ITIL
On our operational side, we are
leveraging the ITIL (IT Information
‘WE INTEND TO MODERNIZE OUR ‘WE INTEND TO MODERNIZE OUR ‘WE INTEND TO MODERNIZE OUR CURRENT AUDIT INFRASTRUCTURE AND TOOLS CURRENT AUDIT INFRASTRUCTURE AND TOOLS CURRENT AUDIT INFRASTRUCTURE AND TOOLS TO ENHANCE THE WAY WE DELIVER RESULTS.’
■ Share services
Our version of “cloud computing” is to leverage other agencies
defined as centers of excellence
for financial and human capital
capabilities. We’re collaborating
with the Department of Transportation to leverage their Oracle
■ Leverage social media
Federal Financials system, with
Treasury for PeopleSoft human
capital capability and with the
In late 2007, GAO launched a wiki
that now has 1,000 participants,
or almost a third of our work
force. The wiki improves knowledge sharing about the agencies,
programs and issues that we audit,
and the specialized skills of the
staff. We recently implemented
RSS streaming to Twitter and a
Library) framework to consolidate operational function, reduce
operational costs and improve ser- operational costs and improve ser- operational costs and improve ser
vice delivery. In conjunction with
adopting ITIL, we are establishing
a consolidated network operations center to improve problem
prevention detection and resolution, and have very aggressive cost
reduction targets.
