The General Services Administration on June 18 issued a request for information (RFI) seeking comment from industry on how GSA can adopt Technology Business Management (TBM) taxonomy across the Federal government, in order to provide “a standardized view of IT spend and provide greater transparency into how the Federal government invests in IT products and services.”
According to the TBM Council, TBM provides a standard taxonomy to describe IT cost sources, technologies, resources, applications, and services, resulting in a “generally accepted way of categorizing and reporting IT costs and other metrics.”
In its RFI, GSA said that providing a standardized view of IT spending would mark an “important milestone” for the cross-agency priority goal for improving outcomes in Federal IT spending transparency, a component of the President’s Management Agenda announced earlier this year “that seeks to adopt TBM governmentwide by 2022.”
GSA said it is specifically looking for “software solutions that can efficiently aggregate and analyze data across the federal enterprise; and/or services that support the preparation and adoption of standard taxonomies in large organizations to facilitate TBM implementation.”
“GSA was one of the first federal agencies to implement TBM and is pleased to co-lead this effort to increase data accountability and transparency governmentwide through the PMA,” said GSA Administrator Emily Murphy in a statement. “Increasing transparency on IT spending will empower federal leaders to make better informed, data-driven decisions and provide greater accountability when investing taxpayer dollars on needed IT solutions.”
“The intent of the Federal Government is not to replace any existing agency systems that capture data useful in TBM but rather to use advanced data analytical tools and services, APIs, and the TBM taxonomy to make fuller use of the data,” GSA said in the RFI.
GSA is holding an online “virtual industry event” on June 26 to discuss the RFI.
