GAO Issues List of IT Challenges for Obama Administration

The dust has hardly settled from last week’s election, but the Government Accountability Office already has a list of IT issues that it says urgently need the attention of President-elect Barack Obama.

In an article on the Government Executive website, Gautham Nagesh says the GAO unveiled a website last week highlighting 13 of the most pressing issues the Obama administration will face.

“The Web site, which is hosted on the GAO site, also includes issues that 28 of the largest agencies face, including the global trade of food that makes the Agriculture Department’s job of inspection more complicated, and the management challenges that all agencies are trying to solve, such as more collaboration and improved acquisition,” Nagesh says.

But IT issues took precedence, including the problems federal agencies face in maintaining and modernizing IT networks. It also highlighted the IT problems the Census Bureau faces in conducting the decennial head count as one of the 13 most pressing needs that the Obama administration must address.

“The bureau plans to use handheld computers as part of its door-to-door effort to count households, but problems in developing the devices have led to delays and large cost overruns, which GAO said could jeopardize the accuracy of the count,” Nagesh says.

GAO also recommended the Obama administration makes sure the Homeland Security Department fulfills its responsibility to protect the networks that operate the nation’s critical infrastructure, especially those of the financial and electrical sectors.