Today’s COVID19 financial environment is completely unexpected and unprecedented. The hospital and university industries are two that may be feeling it the worst. The scramble to save finances in both industries is already happening full tilt, with workforce and human capital being an unwanted but unfortunate casualty. In hospitals, revenue is down 15-20+% with the near [...]
Amidst massive (i.e., 20-30% annual) revenue decline caused by COVID-19 and steadily growing fixed costs, hospitals are suddenly facing declines in their margins of 200-300%, leaving executives scrambling to reduce costs. Previous focal points of hospital value management, like clinical supplies and purchased services, are now becoming much harder to find meaningful latent value. Labor reduction, [...]
Congratulations to the Department of Commerce, and Shirley Bowie-Dean for achieving an A on the most recent MEGABYTE grade! The full FITARA scorecard was published this week. SIE is proud to have supported DOC with improving their MEGABYTE grade, and helped Commerce establish a multi-year plan for software centralization, including all 13 bureaus. Since 2016, SIE [...]
Remember the good old days of American hospital finance? In this case, the good old days I am referring to are only about 10 years ago. Back then, as hospitals were implementing the 2008 Affordable Care Act (ACA), margins were single digit thin. Predicted financial futures were already keeping Health System CFOs up at night. The [...]
FITARA 6.0: Overall Scores Drop and Software License Management (SLM) continues to lag in Federal Agencies Three Lessons SIE Learned by Helping Agencies Earn As on their MEGABYTE Software Licensing Scores Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) 6.0 scores were recently posted, and while we see little improvement in the MEGABYTE component for software [...]
SIE Software License Management Service Attends MGT Reception MGT: Officially open for business! SIE Consulting Group is the driving force behind GSA’s Software License Management Service (SLMS) offering and a leading advocate for the Federal Government’s commitment to efficiently manage information technology (IT) assets. As the leading advocate, several of my colleagues and I attended [...]
Billions here, Billions there. Billions where? Three tips for the agency on effectively managing software The other day, I read the headline: “Agencies Spent Billions on IT Without CIOs’ Approval in 2016”. Seeing this headline came as I was working to update some of our GSA SLMS materials, which includes the bullet: “The Federal Government [...]
FITARA 5.0 - Progress Lags Agency Software Licensing is now included in overall scores – and the results are disappointing The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its biannual Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) 5.0 scorecard on November 14, 2017. I wrote a detailed blog in July about the FITARA 4.0 scorecard. And [...]
It is encouraging to see Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) and 18 cosponsors of H.R. 2227 - The Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act of 2017 - move forward on getting this important legislation enacted. The US House of Representatives passed Hurd’s bill on May 17, 2017, and the hope is that the US Senate (by attaching to [...]
The MEGABYTE Act Turns 1 We don’t hear many agencies singing happy birthday With the one-year anniversary approaching for the passage of MEGABYTE Act, SIE evaluated what was learned and accomplished over the past year. For those not familiar with the MEGABYTE Act (Making Electronic Government Accountable By Yielding Tangible Efficiencies), it essentially requires the [...]
An Interactive Pop Culture Guide to Understanding Complex Federal Government IT Programs: How to distinguish between Software License Management Service (SLMS) and Continuous Diagnostic & Mitigation (CDM)? It’s “Peanut Butter Jelly Time.” I’m writing this blog to help folks across the spectrum (e.g., clients, colleagues, and the next generation Federal IT leaders) better understand the [...]