As part of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA), the State Department has undertaken efforts to modernize the Department’s IT portfolio. In its July update, the State Department announced that it has met all PMA milestones for Q1 and Q2 of this year, and is on track to meet its Q3 milestones.
The IT Modernization Agency Priority Goal, which is spearheaded by State CIO Stuart McGuigan, looks to address three areas of IT management: general IT modernization, improving data quality, and enhancing cybersecurity efforts.
The Department’s top accomplishments for the first half of the year are having:
- Deployed cloud Identity-as-a-Service component of the State Enterprise Identity, Credential, and Access Management solution within the Foreign Affairs Network;
- Initiated Overseas Enabling Baseline Technology project to define minimum standard of IT infrastructure and capabilities at each of State’s international posts;
- Ensured that the majority of Bureau Executives have certified some level of accuracy and completeness of data reported on IT investments including privacy, cybersecurity, and incremental development initiatives;
- Established a configuration management database priority project and implemented discovery on four of the seven network environments; and
- Launched Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Hyper Automation efforts, including evaluating, testing, and implementing prototypes that leverage third-party products and platform level AI tools.
The Department is currently on track to meet its five milestones for the second half of the year. By September 2021, the State Department anticipates achieving all of its milestones and will “satisfy Field Enabling IT baseline levels for capability and performance at all field locations; modernize its suite of core, mission-aligned IT systems incorporating a Cloud Smart approach that enables the Department to share resources and measure efficiencies gained via common cloud platform environments; and achieve a continuous cyber risk diagnostics and monitoring capability that embeds security equities throughout the full lifecycle of all IT systems within every sponsored environment.”
