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IT Reform at the Department of Transportation
The execution of the 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management has given us an exciting opportunity to streamline delivery of the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) IT services and infrastructure. These initiatives are helping us ensure a fast, safe, and convenient transportation system. We are taking innovation to the next level by leveraging new ways to align business, technology, and governance in a comprehensive end-to-end process. DOT has revamped its internal business functions and launched new programs, tools, as well as projects to support the goal of delivering more value to the American taxpayer.
TechStat review sessions are improving governance and accelerating delivery of our IT investments. Recently, we reviewed the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s IT Modernization Project to improve governance of the investment. Ultimately, this will assist FMCSA and State motor carrier safety enforcement personnel in preventing high-risk carriers, drivers, and vehicles from operating motor vehicles, thus increasing safety on the nation’s roads. We are also using these sessions as an opportunity to review the entire IT portfolio within modes (using data from IT Vitals) and providing strategy direction and guidance.
We are also launching an Amazon.com-like IT business catalogue, a one-stop shop for basic, premium, and fee-for-service IT offerings. As this catalogue is fully deployed, DOT users will have a single location to search, select, deploy, rate, and provide feedback on IT services. Highly rated services will be expanded; low-rated services will be improved or retired. This will result in an improved IT service portfolio for users.
In terms of data center consolidation, we have taken a comprehensive look at areas where we can reduce our footprint, which led us to close one data center since the initiative began last year. DOT has identified 42 data centers to be closed by 2015.
We are moving towards a cloud-based solution for web-based systems. This will enable central, collaborative web management to improve content creation, approval, and publishing while reducing the time and cost of development.
Stakeholder engagement is really at the heart of the DOT IT Reform Plan, and I believe one of the keys to its success so far at DOT. As we continue our work implementing IT Reform, my team at DOT looks forward to further input from individuals within and outside the Department. We will continue to use our unique ideation and crowd-sourcing tools and processes, including IdeaHub and DOT IdeaScale, to understand our Department’s more pressing issues and deliver technology solutions wherever appropriate.
Nitin Pradhan is the Chief Information Officer at the Department of Transportation.
