Watchdog Questions HUD’s ‘Inconsistent’ IT Dashboard Data

The inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development says information about the agency’s major IT investments uploaded to a public dashboard may not be entirely accurate.

Agency officials are still manually uploading information about the agency’s eight major IT projects to the IT Dashboard and weren’t able to provide inspectors with underlying documentation for all them, according to an April 29 memo from HUD Assistant Inspector General Kathryn Saylor to Chief Information Officer Rafael Diaz

“The use of manual processes increased the likelihood of entering inaccurate information,” Saylor’s memo stated. The IG also found project managers “did not consistently follow processes when they reported IT financial information for the Dashboard,” according to the memo.

The IT Dashboard is a public website designed to provide a snapshot of the performance of agency IT investments. HUD lists eight major projects on the site.

The IG’s memo suggests the CIO’s office was not entirely cooperative with inspectors.

“Early in our review, we requested that an OCIO representative familiar with uploading IT investment information to the Dashboard guide us through the process, but our request went unanswered,” Saylor wrote in the memo.

The CIO’s office did provide a list of 38 people who it said had responsibility for uploading information about agency IT investments. However, only 10 responded to the IG’s request for information. And some of those who responded told auditors they weren’t actually charge of uploading information to the IT Dashboard.

In addition, while HUD has written guidance for updating the IT Dashboard, the IG said, “it was not dated, nor had it been formally approved or signed by a HUD official authorizing its use,” according to Saylor’s memo. Only one of the 10 people contacted by the IG indicated that he or she knew of and followed the guidance.

The IG also said agency officials were not able to provide planning and financial documents -- so-called Exhibit 300s -- for all HUD investments listed on the site.

Before the start of the IG’s review -- which ran from October 2013 through December 2014 -- the CIO’s office told auditors it was reorganizing the office “to address issues such as the inaccurate and inconsistent reporting of IT financial information” on the dashboard, according to Saylor’s memo. Officials said they were examining how to automate the still-manual process for reporting IT investment information. The CIO did not provide comments on a draft of the IG’s report.

It’s far from the first time the accuracy of information posted to the dashboard has come under scrutiny.

Last month, Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., and Tom Carper, D-Del., wrote to the CIO of the Treasury Department about potentially inaccurate risk ratings covering his agency’s IT portfolio. The CIO rated all of the agency’s IT investments as “low risk,” even though an earlier assessment by another official reported three projects as “high risk.”

Launched in 2009, the IT Dashboard currently lists nearly 740 IT investments.