The US federal government first planned to standardize its categorization of IT costs, resources, and solutions back in 2017. Eight years later, the project has mostly stalled, say auditors, and now they're demanding that it either get priority or get the axe.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) volunteered to head up the government's implementation of the Technology Business Management (TBM) framework in 2017, Government Accountability Office (GAO) auditors said in their [1]report , published on Monday. While OMB has done a bit of TBM work, GAO said, it hasn't done anywhere near enough, leaving agencies waiting on clearer guidance, with many lacking plans and reliable cost models.

The idea behind TBM is simple and relatively important for a massive federal government drowning under the weight of unstandardized IT purchase data. Give agencies a templated way of accounting for all of their IT costs and resources and the government will be able to [2]better understand its expenses.

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When OMB took the reins of the TBM program in 2017, it planned to break down the four layers of the program into various subcategories so that agencies would be able to more easily implement their own reports. A bit of that work got done, but then OMB seemed to have forgotten about the whole thing.

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"OMB's initial 2017 plans required agencies to report IT spending in layer one's nine categories and layer two's 11 categories," the auditors said. "However, as GAO previously reported, 5 years after its initial plans, OMB had not expanded requirements to include the rest of the taxonomy."

This latest TBM report comes three years after a [6]2022 investigation from the GAO that reached similar conclusions, namely that OMB had not expanded requirements beyond the initial layer one/two phase and had yet to document concrete plans or timeframes for the rest of the taxonomy.

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Little has been done since then: Of the seven recommendations GAO made in 2022, only one (GSA's benchmarking tool) has been fully implemented, while OMB has only partially acted on its planning recommendation. The other five remain open.

Despite that, the 26 federal agencies told to implement TBM seem hungry for its standards. Every single one has implemented the initial portions OMB now requires agencies to use, and most have implemented the remaining optional portions too. Unfortunately, a lack of further OMB guidance means "most agencies had not developed a plan for implementing TBM and had not fully established a reliable cost allocation methodology," according to the report.

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GAO auditors didn't mince words about what ought to come next given those failures.

"OMB's lack of action and guidance over the last eight years has led to substantial TBM delays," the GAO concluded in its latest look at the program. "Given the protracted time frames of the initiative and the resources that have been aimed at it, OMB must act now to determine the future of TBM in the federal government."

Ignoring the fact that five of its TBM recommendations have been ignored in the past three years, GAO made just a single recommendation in its latest report: the director of OMB should direct the Federal CIO to figure out whether TBM is a priority for the Trump administration, or if the government should abandon the effort entirely.

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OMB's plans remain a mystery for now - we reached out to the agency - and the White House - to see whether the administration wants to standardize all that federal government IT data or not, but didn't hear back. We don't feel ignored, though. GAO didn't get comments from OMB either, and held off broader distribution for 30 days after giving the agency an early look. ®

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[1] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-106488

[2] https://www.cio.gov/policies-and-priorities/tbm/

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[6] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-104393

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[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/12/pentagon_it_project_flaws_gao/

[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/13/govt_hr_department_has_abysmal/

[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/24/the_pentagon_sucks_at_tracking/

[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/05/epa_dhs_gsa_get_failing_grades/

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[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/