MOVE IT Act Introduced in House and Senate
July 14, 2016
Today, Reps. Will Hurd (R-TX), Barbara Comstock (R-VA), and Jaime Herrera-Beutler (R-WA) along with Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Ted Lieu (D-CA), Robin Kelly (D-IL) and Derek Kilmer (D-WA) will be introducing the Modernize Obsolete and Vulnerable Enterprise IT or MOVE IT Act (previously known as Cloud IT). Senators Tom Udall (D-NM), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Mark Warner (D-VA) and Steve Daines (R-MT) will be introducing an identical version in the Senate.
This bipartisan, bi-cameral introduction is the culmination of months of efforts, to bring the House and Senate sponsors together on a comprehensive bill to accelerate cloud deployments and technology transitions throughout the federal government.
The bill addresses one of the most intractable problems the federal government faces -the lack of flexibility in the current Congressional appropriations process to support the adoption of new, agile-based technologies.
The legislation, is primarily focused on two specific areas;
Establishing a working capital fund at each of the 24 CFO Act agencies to accelerate cloud deployment; and
Reforming the FedRAMP program
The new working capital funds will be draw funds from cost savings achieved by the agencies in moving to new, more secure platforms. Because the agencies will be allowed to “bank” the savings rather than having to return the unused monies back to the Treasury, they will be highly incentivized to accelerate cloud adoption and move to more cost-effective systems.
The new funding will be deemed “3-year money” giving agencies the time to adopt new, modular and agile development approaches. The agencies will spend the money in accordance with OMB guidelines issued by Federal CIO Tony Scott. The legislation also provides for reprogramming authority for the funds to be re-deployed for new IT systems.
In addition to this crucial new funding flexibility, the MOVE-IT Act also contains significant FedRAMP reform proposals to accelerate and reform this crucial program.
The HSG/Cyrrus Analytics team were the original drafter of this legislative package and have been working tirelessly since February 2016 to get the legislation to the point where it sits today and while we recognize the bill is not perfect, we believe it is a critical starting point for discussion on IT modernization.
The MOVE IT Act now sits in parallel to HR 4897, the IT Modernization Act of 2016, introduced earlier this year by Rep. Steny Hoyer. As the process moves forward in September following the Congressional recess that begins today, we expect there to be significant discussion on how the ideas proposed in each of the bills can work together to accomplish the ultimate goal of accelerating the federal government’s transition off legacy IT.
We believe that if effectively implemented, the MOVE-IT Act will significantly accelerate government transitions to new innovative platforms and in so doing will open up major new business opportunities for cloud and related technology companies. We look forward to working with your team to benefit from this important new legislation.
