The federal government needs to eliminate duplication to save dollars but also to free up time and resources in agencies’ acquisition offices so more effort can be put into transformative information technology projects, VanRoekel noted during the Congressional Forum on Technology hosted by Reps. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and Elijah Cummings, D-Md.

“There’s an effort under way to start to look at how many [information technology] systems people are running in these agencies,” he said. “How many email systems? At the Department of Labor there are seven. There’s an opportunity there to save money.” He pointed to past successes as well: Three years ago, the Agriculture Department was managing 21 email contracts and 1,000 mobile contracts to implement primarily a BlackBerry service. The department reduced those numbers to one and three respectively. The new email system cost one-third as much as the systems that had been in place, and the mobile computing blanket purchasing agreements saved Agriculture 18 percent.

Consolidation efforts also need to be strategic to ensure fair competition among contractors, VanRoekel noted.

“Should we go extreme on consolidation, and run one email system? The Canadian government has done this; one email, one procurement system,” he said. “Contemplating how we’d manage that at our scale is one factor. But also, if we the government were to pick the winner, we would do a great disservice to business. We need to strike that balance.”

Just as agencies need to smartly consolidate the number of contracts currently in place, they also need to rely more on modular contacting, which breaks up large contracts into smaller chunks to make them more manageable to implement and fund, VanRoekel added.

“We have too many $100 million five-year contracts that end up $300 [million] to $500 million and extend to 12 years because funding year to year is inconsistent,” he said. “Leadership changes and laws change as you go through implementation. So what can we deliver in a single year? Failure on a $500 million project is much different than [failure of] a small one."

The Labor Department is among the agencies that could undergo a significant consolidation effort, shrinking seven contracts for separate email systems down to one, said federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel.

The federal government needs to eliminate duplication to save dollars but also to free up time and resources in agencies’ acquisition offices so more effort can be put into transformative information technology projects, VanRoekel noted during the Congressional Forum on Technology hosted by Reps. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and Elijah Cummings, D-Md.

“There’s an effort under way to start to look at how many [information technology] systems people are running in these agencies,” he said. “How many email systems? At the Department of Labor there are seven. There’s an opportunity there to save money.” He pointed to past successes as well: Three years ago, the Agriculture Department was managing 21 email contracts and 1,000 mobile contracts to implement primarily a BlackBerry service. The department reduced those numbers to one and three respectively. The new email system cost one-third as much as the systems that had been in place, and the mobile computing blanket purchasing agreements saved Agriculture 18 percent.

Consolidation efforts also need to be strategic to ensure fair competition among contractors, VanRoekel noted.

“Should we go extreme on consolidation, and run one email system? The Canadian government has done this; one email, one procurement system,” he said. “Contemplating how we’d manage that at our scale is one factor. But also, if we the government were to pick the winner, we would do a great disservice to business. We need to strike that balance.”

Just as agencies need to smartly consolidate the number of contracts currently in place, they also need to rely more on modular contacting, which breaks up large contracts into smaller chunks to make them more manageable to implement and fund, VanRoekel added.

“We have too many $100 million five-year contracts that end up $300 [million] to $500 million and extend to 12 years because funding year to year is inconsistent,” he said. “Leadership changes and laws change as you go through implementation. So what can we deliver in a single year? Failure on a $500 million project is much different than [failure of] a small one."