The other Centers of Excellence agencies are closer to the beginning of the process. The Department of Housing and Urban Development joined in September 2018 in order to update its legacy, COBOL-based technologies.
Chief among them are technologies that are the basis for financial general ledger systems, payment systems and grant management. The agency also plans to create a chief data officer position.
HUD CFO Irv Dennis says that the agency completed its Phase One assessment and is deciding which vendors to use. “We issued the RFPs, the responses have been returned, and we are now evaluating them,” he explains.
One area of focus for the agency is its need for a cloud-based electronic records management system (many HUD records are still paper-based), while others target the creation of a contact center that would make it simpler for customers to get in touch with the agency, as well as dashboards and other tools to facilitate data management.
Dennis predicts it will be several years before HUD is fully up to speed in all areas of IT modernization. Meanwhile, he says, they’re gaining ground every day. “I’m so excited about the changes we’ve made, and I’m really looking forward to what’s ahead.”
According to Dennis, the changes include the implementation of robotic process automation within the CFO office, artificial intelligence technologies that assist high-risk grantees and a prototype for Federal Housing Administration IT modernization.
In 2019, the Office of Personnel Management partnered with GSA to focus on overall infrastructure improvement, including the installation of two backup mainframes to add a layer of protection for critical data related to OPM’s background investigation programs and retirement services.
OPM has made significant progress in its Centers of Excellence–related work, including the procurement of IBM mainframes for disaster recovery.
Last fall, the GSA announced a collaboration with the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center at the Department of Defense, focusing the use of AI in humanitarian aid and disaster response.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission began work with GSA in late September. CPSC planned to develop an enterprise data strategy and implementation plan, as well as a pilot program to test artificial intelligence tools agency’s 2019 financial report. The newest partner, the Labor Department, which was named a CoE in February, will focus on robotic process automation and AI tools.