With the enactment of the Program Management Improvement and Accountability Act late last year, the federal government has the opportunity and mandate to address two long-standing challenges: delivering successfully on large-scale change initiatives and addressing the dearth of well-qualified program managers across executive branch agencies.

For a government that operates through the execution of programs — many of them large and complex — such gaps represent enormous risk.

Even in a modular, agile world, the role of program managers remains essential, because change initiatives are more likely to cross multiple organizations. After all, the federal government manages more than $3 trillion in annual budgets and hundreds of huge programs critical to the nation and its citizens.

But the federal landscape remains littered with what Peat-Marwick once dubbed “runaway systems” — projects that are over budget, behind schedule and failing to deliver promised benefits and functionality. Thanks to the PMIAA, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) now has the responsibility to implement a set of policies to improve program management in government. As the Trump administration takes shape, OMB should leverage this opportunity to increase the probability of successfully delivering on its initiatives.

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