COMPASS™: Improving Programmatic Investments and Outcomes

To achieve the most value with their resources, organizations must manage their investments. Government organizations face challenges including numerous and complex regulations, constrained budgets, competing stakeholder objectives, and public reporting requirements. Effective investment management can eliminate redundancies, optimize resource allocation, minimize the time required to implement new projects, improve solutions, and provide data driven decision-making. LMI helps the government achieve these desirable outcomes by making informed decisions, prioritizing projects, creating business case analyses, and supporting each investment throughout its lifecycle. With our assistance, federal agencies benefit from and comply with measures taken by the Government Accountability Office and Office of Management and Budget to strengthen the analysis of Technology Business Management and ensure effective use of taxpayer money.¹

The federal government spent approximately $87.4 billion dollars on IT programs and projects in fiscal year 2023, much of which, approximately 70%, was allocated to maintaining legacy systems. Over the last ten years, the federal government has spent $85B annually on information technology.²  This amount is expected to trend upward as digital transformation accelerates and IT infrastructure becomes increasingly vital to government organizations’ success. In business cases where a federal agency needs to determine how to best utilize their funding, such as by deciding to maintain or upgrade their existing systems or invest in a newer software solution, LMI’s subject matter experts can provide increased financial transparency and help optimize spending.

LMI’s COMPASS™ approach ensures investments are properly executed and the appropriate stakeholders are included when forming and approving them. We begin by bringing together cross functional teams and subject matter experts in cost estimation, economic analysis, decision support, organizational strategy, business case development, and IT. This group selects an investment that aligns with the strategic mission of the organization, manages the execution of the investment within the government policy framework, and evaluates the ongoing performance of the investment to validate that it’s delivering expected benefits. Best practices we have identified working with the government include: