CIOs cautiously optimistic about OMB's IT dashboard

The Office of Management and Budget has told agencies to get data on their information technology projects ready for public viewing.

In a Chief Information Officer's Council meeting May 27, federal CIO Vivek Kundra introduced the administration's next transparency initiative, an IT project dashboard.

A government source, who attended the meeting, says Kundra told agencies to resubmit their earned value management data from their exhibit 300 business cases in preparation for public posting.

The source, who requested anonymity because they were not approved to speak about the meeting, says Kundra used the meeting as an opportunity to remind agencies where the administration is heading.

A few days later at the Management of Change conference in Norfolk, Va., Kundra publicly unveiled the IT dashboard, surprising and exciting both CIOs and vendors alike.

Kundra says the idea of the dashboard is to hold the public accountable and make the $75 billion in IT spending more transparent.

"We have a portfolio of 6,000 investments and we will know how they are performing against cost and schedule and we will hold agency CIOs accountable for the project's performance," he says.

OMB, through the General Services Administration, began developing the tool in January. GSA, which acts as OMB's procurement arm, hired RE Systems of Herndon, Va.

GSA awarded REI Systems a 5-year, $10 million contract in March 2008 to work on USASpending.gov and other OMB systems, according to the company's Web site.

Several agency CIOs say the dashboard is a welcomed change, but a little scary too.

Many agencies, such as the Defense Department, NASA and the Small Business Administration, already use these tools.

"I'm waiting to see its dashboard," says SBA CIO Christine Rider. "I like to see the details of it and comment back to OMB. I also want to see how our dashboard information will be ported over and what additional details will be required by OMB."

Rider says the dashboard may require extra work by CIOs in the short term. But she says it will depend on how deep OMB wants to drill down.

"It really depends on implementation phase," she says.

Bajinder Paul, CIO at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, also uses a dashboard in his agency.

"We use ours for business intelligence, for data driven management and we use data as a key business enabler," Paul says.

He says OMB's approach is exciting and will help agencies better understand how their projects are doing.

Sanjeev Bhagowalia, the Interior Department's CIO, says a lot of the information on projects already exists.

He says the tough part will be taking project management data and reconciling it with Exhibit 53 data, and looking at it in real time.

"That is one comment we all would like to make to figure out how you make that happen," Bhagowalia says. "This is a good thing because it really changes behavior. No one wants to be red or yellow for two or three quarters in a row."

OMB wants CIOs, industry and others to comment on the dashboard. Kundra says he expects to release the beta version of the dashboard by June 30. It will include the top 25 agencies, but have limited functionality he says.

The dashboard approach is very different from what the Bush administration focused on, says Dave McClure, a former Government Accountability Office auditor and now vice president in Gartner Research's government team.

"The difference is it is more of an aggregate portfolio review that allows you to see what is happening across an agency or across the government," he says. "It's also time series based which allows you to see what's been happening for some time, and not just a point in time snapshot."

McClure adds that the President's Management Agenda scorecard was a governmentwide agenda put on top of agency mission. The Obama administration scorecards are focused on agency mission, he says.

"They are going back to what business you are in and how well are you succeeding in it with some overall performance goals set by OMB," McClure says. "Vivek's scorecard still has a lot of typical operational things, but it needs to have some of the benefit realization in there too."

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On the Web:

FederalNewsRadio - OMB to measure IT projects through a dashboard

FederalNewsRadio - OMB to consolidate IT watch lists

FederalNewsRadio - Dashboards: coming soon to an agency near you? (Daily Debrief)

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