Last month, OMB management guru Jeff Zients unveiled the Obama administration's five-part internet technology (IT) reform proposal during a talk before the Northern Virginia Tech Council. Highlighting the administration's achievements in IT reform thus far – including the launching of the IT Dashboard and a recently concluded review of federal financial system projects – Zients sketched out the five parts: introducing budget and acquisitions flexibility, strengthening program management, increasing accountability, increasing engagement with industry, and adopting light technologies.

These five parts are broken down into a more detailed 25-point plan, released earlier this month by the White House. For instance, the introduction of budget and acquisitions flexibility lists four specific steps to implement each reform and a timeline for the responsible parties to execute the steps.

The potential of some of the more vague steps to achieve the reforms intended is less than clear – such as the identification and adoption of best practices across government to reform acquisitions – but other steps seem spot on, like the design and development of a cadre of specialized IT acquisition professionals.

Of course, current economic constraints, such as the administration's imposition of a two-year pay freeze on federal employees, may not only hinder the government in attracting new acquisition professionals to beef up the ranks, it may force some of the government's current IT professionals to leave an already depleted corps.

Moreover, the reforms that target government culture or how government personnel operate, such as the attempt to institute greater cohesion and collaboration on IT projects within agencies, are going to be more difficult to implement than the other reforms are. Culture shifts take time.

But it seems like the administration has at least planned for this inevitable, if not unconscious, resistance through specific requirements that personnel meet in terms of collaboration and other milestones before an IT project can proceed. Therefore, government personnel will have a buy-in to the process.

With that said, most of the reforms make a lot of sense. The adoption of light technologies and shared solutions, to take another example, shows a lot of promise. Pulling tested and available tech from the market will help cut down on costs, as departments can't overload a contractor with outrageous demands that take years to work out, which, because by the time the product is ready, it's already out of date, renders it useless. Overall, these reforms, in time, should help dramatically cut down on wasted taxpayer dollars on government IT projects.

Image by Flickr user Center for American Progress used under a Creative Commons license.