Obama Calls For IT Procurement Reform

President Obama on Monday called for an overhaul of the way the federal government purchases information technology in the wake of the troubled launch of the Healthcare.gov website.

“There are a whole range of things that we’re going to need to do once we get this fixed -- to talk about federal procurement when it comes to IT and how that’s organized,” Obama said in remarks in Washington before members of Organizing for Action, a grassroots advocacy organization that grew out of his presidential campaign.

Obama said, “I personally have been frustrated with the problems around the website on health care.  And it’s inexcusable.”

The president said part of the problem was simply managing an operation as large and complex as the federal government. “What I want to just remind people of is that this government is an enormous enterprise,” he said, “and so even as sometimes we see ourselves getting stymied at the congressional level, at the administrative level, in the work that we’re doing, all kinds of changes are happening.”