July 30, 2009 Vol. 2, Issue 7
The federal government’s Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra unveiled the government’s IT Dashboard website to monitor the status and effectiveness of government information technology (IT) system spending.
The federal IT Dashboard debuted on Tuesday, June 30, 2009, and it is already getting results. Within two weeks it had received 20 million hits, according to the White House’s online Briefing Room blog. In an interview with Nextgov, federal CIO Kundra said that the process of compiling information for the dashboard had led the Department of Veterans Affairs to suspend 45 IT projects.
The dashboard displays the purpose, cost, schedule performance figures, and agency CIO ratings for over 800 active government IT system developments with costs over $50 million. Among these are the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Defense, the Smithsonian Institution, and NASA, which is currently reported to have 23 major investments costing $1.3 billion.
The dashboard presents an easy-to-read interface with animated time lines and downloadable data feeds. The site still currently only displays year-ahead estimates reported by departments and agencies to the Office of Budget and Management. It expects to switch over to monthly figures and fill remaining gaps as data become available.
