What makes your TMF proposal competitive?

The TMF Board carefully weighs the following factors when selecting which projects to fund. The more closely your proposal aligns with these factors, the more competitive it is.

Competitive repayment

  • We expect at least 50% repayment, but 100% repayment is more competitive. Full repayment demonstrates your agency’s support for modernization while also ensuring that our fund is sustainable.
  • Under extremely rare circumstances, repayment exemptions are possible and require OMB and GSA senior leadership support.

Alignment with TMF and government-wide priorities

  • As outlined in the Modernizing Government Technology Act, proposals must improve, retire, or replace existing federal information technology systems to enhance cybersecurity and privacy, and improve long-term efficiency and effectiveness.
  • In alignment with TMF’s mission, demonstrate how your project improves your agency’s ability to deliver its mission and services to the American public, while also serving as a possible solution that can be leveraged by other agencies.
  • Show how your project also aligns with current government-wide priorities like zero trust security posture; delivering effective digital experiences that are simple, seamless, and secure; and ensuring the responsible use of emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence (AI).

Value proposition (return on investment (ROI))

  • Include quantifiable impact outcomes like enhancing customer experience, reducing administrative burdens, and cost savings or cost avoidance.
  • Highlight if your project’s value benefits other agencies or is an inter-agency collaboration.

Resource and project planning

  • Provide detailed financial planning. Competitive projects are less than $25M and take no more than three years to implement. Most of our investments don’t exceed $40M and use a five year repayment timeline, though the TMF Board will consider outliers.
  • Include realistic procurement schedules and hiring plans, demonstrating good resource management that clearly shows your agency’s ability to meet project timelines.

Capacity to deliver

  • Demonstrate strong cross-organization executive sponsorship (CFO, CIO, and program leadership) and an empowered project lead, who can effectively own and guide the effort.
  • Proposals from an agency component must include department-level executive sponsorship as well.
  • Show that it’s agency employees who drive and manage your TMF project, not contractors such as industry partners, or other staff outside of your agency.
  • Demonstrate in-house availability of skills or technologies needed to achieve project goals.
  • Demonstrate a robust procurement and hiring strategy, including leveraging existing contracts.

Iterative and evidence-driven

  • Provide data-driven evidence that supports your approach, such as user and market research, and cost analysis.
  • Show a commitment to an agile approach that breaks your projects into shorter, manageable cycles, allowing you to easily adapt and apply learnings.

Partnership in TMF proposal process

  • Commit to participating in TMF workshops and briefings. Commit to sharing project artifacts publicly when feasible (like requirements statements, ROI calculations, solicitation language, industry engagement approaches) and collaborating with TMF to share lessons learned.
  • Be responsive to our requests and proactively engage with TMF and our investment management staff.

If you have questions or need assistance

Our Program Management Office (PMO) is here to guide your team through the TMF proposal process.