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Oct 30 2018
Management

TMF Board Funds New Projects at USDA, GSA and Labor

The new round of funding, worth a total of $23.5 million, will support application modernization, infrastructure optimization and cloud adoption, and a shift to digital documents.
Phil Goldstein
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Phil Goldstein is a former web editor of the CDW family of tech magazines and a veteran technology journalist. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and their animals: a dog named Brenna, and two cats, Grady and Princess.

The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) Board on Oct. 29 announced that it had awarded $23.5 million to three agencies. In its second round of awards, the board doled out money to the Agriculture and Labor Departments and the General Services Administration, as FedScoop reports.  

The winning proposals “exemplify a commitment to improving citizen services, modernizing legacy technology, lowering operational costs, and creating a secure environment,” according to a press release. 

According to MeriTalk, the funding will support the following projects:

  • $15 million to GSA for Application Modernization Integrating Flexible Architecture. The project will focus on the 88 GSA applications in need of modernization by “conduct a pilot for full stack application modernizations and transform 10-15 percent of GSA systems that are on legacy proprietary software to open source technologies.” 
  • $5 million to USDA for Infrastructure Optimization and Cloud Adoption. USDA worked with the GSA Cloud Centers of Excellence to “develop their approach and will focus on avoiding duplication of IT components by using a shared services cloud platform model,” the TMF website says.
  • $3.5 million to the Labor Department for Labor Certification Process Digitization. Currently, the agency issues certain types of work visas via dedicated certification printing rooms equipped with specialized printers that use expensive blue security paper. The certifications are manually printed and mailed to employer applicants via overnight mail. “The system improvements will enable the Department of Labor to issue a Labor Certification securely and electronically to employer applicants through an ‘E-Certification’ document,” the TMF website states.

In March, Congress appropriated $100 million for the TMF for fiscal year 2018. Agencies can apply to get money from the fund to modernize their IT and make it more efficient and secure. A board set up by the Office of Management and Budget and chaired by Federal CIO Suzette Kent assesses and approves proposals from agencies. Agencies must reimburse the fund for any transfer of TMF money in accordance with the terms of a written agreement. In June, the TMF board awarded the departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Agriculture with funding for IT modernization projects, totaling $45 million among them.

MORE FROM FEDTECH: See how USDA, HUD and Energy are spending the first round of TMF funding! 

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