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eCPIC: Maximizing the Value of IT Investments at Government Agencies Over 42% of the 2008 federal IT budget request was submitted to OMB through a Booz Allen-supported portfolio management tool. It’s called Electronic Capital Planning & Investment Control (eCPIC). It’s a government off-the-shelf (GOTS) application that manages and measures an organization’s IT investments and aligns them to core business and performance drivers. And its impact on some government agencies has been enormous. “From fortifying national security, to providing financial assistance to homeless families impacted by Hurricane Katrina, agency IT investments support missions for the nation or the world,” explains Booz Allen Hamilton principal James Benson. “So its choice of IT is critical.” But managing IT investments is a massive undertaking. The Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 further complicated the process by requiring agencies to justify how their IT investments supported their business lines, and ensure they were not creating IT just for IT’s sake. As agencies implemented the Act and sound management processes, Booz Allen partnered with the Department of Energy to create a cost-effective tool—called the Information Technology Investment Portfolio Systems (I-TIPS)—to help agencies select, control, and evaluate IT investments. Later, when more adaptability was needed within I-TIPS, agencies and Booz Allen worked together to build on past successes and best practices, and launched a new, highly flexible tool in 2004. That tool was e-CPIC. eCPIC helps agencies collect, manage, and maintain the critical business and IT portfolio and performance data they need to write business cases, which must comply with requirements from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Government Accounting Office (GAO). Business cases are instrumental in whether an agency receives project funding. Flexible, adaptable, and Web-based, eCPIC easily adjusts to ever-changing business and legislative requirements, missions, programs, and management needs for monitoring and controlling IT investments. eCPIC integrates these changes with existing systems and processes, aligns IT to each agency’s core business, and reports on IT performance relative to agency goals and performance drivers. And it does so without re-writing the platform and supporting modules and components. But to truly appreciate the scope of this project, you have start at the Department of Energy (DoE), where I-TIPS was launched in 1997. Improving Investment Management by Collecting Agency-Specific Data More than a decade ago, Booz Allen vice president Michael Farber, Benson, and their team partnered with DoE and GSA to develop I-TIPS. I-TIPS automated the IT decision-making process and accelerated agencies’ collection and analysis of project data. Interest in IT expenditures and performance, however, extended beyond DoE and GSA. Most federal agencies were concerned about their IT budgets and whether their investments adequately supported mission, program, and business operations. But retrieving the necessary information to comply with the then-newly passed Clinger-Cohen Act was a tedious, inexact process. Agencies needed a way to collect IT data rapidly, adapt to changing OMB requirements quickly, evaluate processes, and provide decision support—i.e., the where, why, and how that ensured IT supported mission and programmatic means and ends. Agencies started turning to I-TIPS as their solution of choice. Changing technology drove the need for an upgrade a few years later. “Most GOTS products are one size fits all, but we needed a more accessible tool to collect information that was important to each agency,” says program manager and senior associate Jerry McQuoid. Booz Allen teamed again with the I-TIPS Change Management Committee (CMC) to redevelop the I-TIPS architecture and launch it as eCPIC. eCPIC provides the flexibility I-TIPS did not have to assist in the day-to-day management of investments and create customized processes, user-defined fields, and data capture templates to support agency-specific CPIC processes. By 2006, eCPIC’s functionality had expanded to include portfolio management, investment scoring, and investment management modules and Web services. A Combined Business/Technical Perspective Drives Investment Solutions To support agency-specific CPIC processes, eCPIC includes a suite of investment, portfolio, analytic, and management components. “eCPIC can leverage existing systems and products and is easily navigated to find investment data quickly,” says McQuoid. “It’s customizable, so organizations can collect, analyze, and report on a variety of portfolio information, including budget status and funding plans, acquisition plans, internal and external audit tracking, legislative and regulatory compliance, scoring criteria, and performance and risk management.” eCPIC supports the IT capital planning process flow—i.e., selection, control, and evaluation—and creates the IT portfolio that is submitted to OMB for funding. Following OMB approval of an agency’s IT budget, eCPIC helps the agency monitor and measure the progress of its IT projects and the extent to which they deliver the intended outcomes. The 2008 IT budget for all federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, was over $65 billion. Today, the eCPIC platform can readily accommodate steadily increasing data demands, as well as advanced process and technical changes to help agencies effectively manage IT supply relative to their business requirements. Says McQuoid, “Agencies receive new guidance each year from OMB. We analyze those changes from the business side, turn them into technical requirements, and integrate them into the eCPIC tool to ease compliance.” Sharing Best Practices in a Community of Interest eCPIC is governed by agency feedback and direction from a Change Management Committee (CMC) of representatives from each member agency. Member agencies have an equal voice in modifying eCPIC and also contribute a non-monetary service, such as providing user acceptance testing for new releases. In June 2007, members included:
Because eCPIC is Web-based, not license-based, a precise number of users cannot be determined. But, McQuoid says, it ranges from a few dozen to thousands per agency. eCPIC is maintained through a subscription-based service level agreement (SLA) that provides members with full software lifecycle development, requirements gathering, technical and help desk support, training, and documentation. “eCPIC trumps other products in its price point,” says McQuoid. “Agencies share equally in system upgrade and maintenance costs, which are much less than other commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products, which can be in excess of $1 million at each agency.” A community of interest addresses functional and practical needs related to eCPIC, says associate Ryan Bolchoz. “With 42% of the total federal civil IT budget request submitted through eCPIC—approximately $14.4 billion in FY08—a common community of interest for member agencies is critical, to them and to us. Regular meetings with the CMC involve discussions on best practices, lessons learned, and related issues. We are deeply involved in working with the group.” story posted July 10, 2007
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