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Best Practices: Monthly IT Investment Self-Assessments
Conducting monthly assessments of IT investments to formulate the CIO evaluations published on the Federal IT Dashboard
Executive Summary
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) implemented a monthly self-assessment process for major information technology (IT) investments. Using a standardized self-assessment template developed by the Agency’s IT Investment Management team, investment managers provide information about their investments to the CIO that supplements data published on the Federal IT Dashboard, including their perspectives on factors influencing investment performance. The CIO reviews the self-assessments and considers them in preparing his monthly scores and comments for the Federal IT Dashboard. In addition, subject matter experts review the self-assessments and provide the CIO and investment managers with their perspectives on IT security, privacy, Enterprise Architecture, project management and other factors addressed in the self-assessments and engage, as appropriate, in discussions with the managers to strengthen the investments. The result is a rich, multi-faceted dialogue that occurs at least monthly among investment managers, the CIO, and subject matter experts on matters related to IT investment success.
The self-assessment process facilitates clear communication within OPM between the CIO and investment managers about expectations for investment performance, and provides the CIO with early warning of factors affecting investment success, in time for the CIO to take pre-emptive action. It also provides an ongoing reminder to investment managers, through the self-assessment questions, of their responsibilities for implementing key regulatory and program management requirements that are sometimes overlooked in a focus on program needs.
As a result of the self-assessment process, the OPM CIO and Investment managers engage in frequent discussions to identify and correct pending problems. The process enables OPM to strengthen investment performance and to provide rich and timely updates and consistent messages about the status of OPM IT investments to the American public through the Federal IT Dashboard.
