Officials from the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration (ITA) joined Apptio’s 2025 Public Sector Summit today to share how implementing Technology Business Management (TBM) principles has enabled a comprehensive view of their IT spending.
The ITA’s mission is to enhance the global competitiveness of U.S. industries, promote trade and investments, and ensure fair trade practices. The ITA is a team of over 2,200 professionals who support U.S.-based businesses in navigating international markets.
“IT is the backbone of everything that we do at ITA, whether it’s managing global trade data or whether it’s keeping our employees connected across continents,” said Tanya Smith, the director of ITA’s Office of Budget and Finance.
“Situating TBM within our budget and finance department has allowed us to utilize TBM to fundamentally transform how we align IT with our organizational priorities, which allows leadership to more effectively guide the organization’s strategic priorities,” Smith added.
Smith explained that ITA first initiated TBM in its Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO), but it was later moved to the Office of Budget and Finance. The officials explained that close collaboration between the two offices is “essential” to TBM’s success.
Traci Birckhead, the lead program manager of TBM within ITA’s Office of Budget and Finance, explained that “TBM is designed to coexist with existing workflows, not to disrupt them.”
“We want to work together. Partnering across teams ensures that the insights provided by TBM complement broader strategic goals, so everyone’s working towards the same goal,” Birckhead said.
Every year, the CIO shop collaborates with the TBM office to develop a “transparent IT spend plan,” according to Michael Soos, the vice president of business development and client solutions at Tenacious Solutions.
“During that process, every budget line item is aligned with TBM taxonomy,” Soos said. However, he noted that it was not aligned when ITA first started its TBM journey.
“We had to look at our contracts – because IT is heavily contract-based. We went line by line, and we made sure that the TBM taxonomy was built into our budget formulation or our plan,” Soos said.
“One key insight we gained was the importance of maintaining year-to-year consistency in our taxonomy. So, for example, when a new budget line item is introduced, we assign taxonomy attributes strategically, ensuring our data remains usable for the long-term analysis,” he said.
Soos said that these insights help “refine the formulation of future fiscal years,” adding, “We believe we now have a more agile and transparent budget process, which is a key pillar to our TBM implementation.”
Notably, Smith said that one of the more recent TBM tools that ITA has added is a dashboard for senior leadership.
“We’ve been able to create a dashboard for our senior leadership, so for myself and the executives above me, which provides them both the historical and a current view of the cost and consumption by ITA’s individual business units,” Smith said.
Smith concluded the conversation by saying that implementing TBM at ITA “has been a rewarding effort.”
“It has not only brought financial rigor and transparency to our IT management but has also underscored the value that technology delivers to our mission,” Smith said. “We see TBM as more than just a framework. It’s a roadmap for long-term success and aligning IT investments with our organizational priorities.”