OMB's dashboard site plays role in suspending 45 tech projects at VA

Top officials with the Veterans Affairs Department, while compiling data for a recently launched White House Web site that details information technology projects, identified more than 45 failing projects that the agency subsequently suspended, federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra said in an interview with Nextgov on Friday.

In preparing data for the so-called IT Dashboard , a site that offers a window into the complex and costly process of procuring government IT services, VA officials discovered problems with some of the agency's IT projects. For example, while sifting through the data, VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki and CIO Roger Baker learned that a scheduling project was running 17 months behind schedule, Kundra said.

Shinseki and Baker announced on Friday that they temporarily stopped development of 45 projects that are either behind schedule or over budget to determine if they should be canceled or salvaged.

"The dashboard is an impetus and is a driver for looking deep into where the problems are with these projects," Kundra said. But fixing IT problems requires "making sure we've got rock star CIOs in agencies," such as Baker, he said.

The tool represents part of a larger White House effort to hold the government accountable for contract management, Kundra added. The purpose of the site is to update the public every month on the cost, schedule and performance figures, so taxpayers can see which IT projects are on-track and which are not.

Many problems with federal IT investments date back to the 1990s, and Kundra stressed that the dashboard is a first step to reversing schedule slippages and cost overruns. "Without acting on the insight" from the dashboard, "what we end up with is the same management processes and problems," he said.

Kundra and VA leaders plan to meet regularly to audit progress on the IT projects, which are budgeted to receive about $200 million in fiscal 2009. They include a health data repository, home telehealth infrastructure enhancement and a master patient index.

The dashboard, unveiled on June 30, draws inspiration from a management style Kundra employed while serving as chief technology officer for the District of Columbia. The "stock market model" of IT management, as he described it, involved imagining projects and programs as public companies. District portfolio managers reviewed all IT investments through quarterly evaluations of cost, time and value.

Kundra now encourages Americans nationwide to suggest new projects and provide advice on managing the ongoing IT initiatives by submitting comments on the dashboard site.

By Aug. 1, agency CIOs must submit investment evaluations to the Office of Management and Budget to update the site's analytics. The dashboard is slated to exceed requirements set out in federal law by refreshing statistics monthly. "The process of launching [the dashboard] involved working closely with CIOs to get reports monthly instead of [the mandated] quarterly [cycle] . . . to make sure they were putting management process in place that made sense," Kundra said.