Capital Planning & IT Governance Division (CPITGD)

Enterprise IT Governance ensures USDA functional business areas along with their IT Investments, systems and applications are able to achieve successful outcomes. Ensures better alignment with business needs and ability to meet cost, schedule, and performance goals and milestones. It incorporates management oversight controls and processes to address funding, scope, and resource needs as an actionable and incremental enterprise approach to IT governance. This approach coupled with project and program management principles and best practices places emphasis on demonstrating measurable results for IT investments in order to eliminate waste and reduce duplication of efforts thus producing cost savings, avoidance and other measurable returns on investments collaboratively decided between the business and IT leaders.

IT Portfolio - USDA’s IT portfolio comprises all IT investments, both operational and in development. The USDA portfolio is the enterprise-wide view of the history and future of USDA IT investments. Key IITGF activities a this level are environmental scanning for new industry and federal government developments, continuous technical and program focused portfolio analysis, and the development of transition strategies to move USDA from the current state to the target state, and the compilation and submission of the USDA IT budget.

IT Investment - IT investments are aligned to functional lines of business that focus on achieving an interrelated set of organizational goals and objectives in support of USDA’s mission and in accordance with the direction set by USDA’s target architecture. Key activities at this level include the identification, sponsorship, preparation, planning, and selection of IT investments within the context of the USDA transition strategy, development of investment business cases, update and maintenance of IT investment documentation, and the monitoring of investment performance.

IT Project - Projects are temporary endeavors that make up investments. Projects cover a range of types, including new development, operations and maintenance, service delivery, and organizational strengthening. Projects are managed according to the USDA System Development Life Cycle (AgSDLC).

CPITGD establishes and maintains a process of regular engagements with program managers (PMs) to evaluate IT resources supporting each agency strategic objective to ensure that legacy and on-going IT investments are appropriately delivering customer value and meeting the business objectives of programs. Program managers work with CPITGD to define and then the PMs update their IT performance metrics and strategies to support fulfillment of agency strategic objectives defined in the agency’s strategic plan. Assist IT Workforce Program Manager to implement a Program and Project Manager training, development program. Also reviews and makes decisions on Federal Acquisition IT certification request for USDA, that Focus on essential competencies needed to successfully manage major, non-major and standard investments to include but not limited to complex IT program and project initiatives.

Capital Planning & IT Governance Departmental Liaisons

Additional Information:

For additional details and access to CPITGD artifacts, please visit our CPITGD SharePoint site.

To provide feedback and exchange ideas on enhancing CPITGD artifacts, please send an email to: AgITGovernance@usda.gov