The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is kicking off its effort to cut billions of dollars in information technology spending with a full-committee hearing later today.

“Information technology is at the heart of every federal agency or program’s ability to function successfully,” said Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif), in a release. “We’ve built an IT infrastructure that is bloated, inefficient and actually makes it more difficult for the government to serve its citizens.”

According to an OGR spokesman, government IT spending has increased from $46 billion in 2001 to $80 billion in 2012, with an estimated $20 billion in taxpayer money being wasted annually to program failures and cost overruns.

“Federal #IT spending decisions are often not based on performance results: managers say 47% goes to maintain obsolete/deficient IT resources,” said Issa, in a Twitter post this morning.


Issa posted a discussion draft of the IT reform legislation online.

As a lead-up to today’s hearing, the committee released a video [see below] entitled “Why Federal Government Needs an IT Revolution.”

The video uses back office support systems as an example of one area where waste and duplication can be targeted to cut costs.

“In their fiscal year 2011 submissions, agencies reported 622 separate investments totaling $2.4 billion in human resource management systems and 580 investments totaling $2.7 billion in financial management systems,” the OGR spokesman said.

Federal News Radio Executive Editor Jason Miller will be covering today’s hearing. Check back later for his report.