OMB: Agencies Would Lie About IT Project Risk

Government Executive has three stories (here, here and here) regarding the congressionally described “Dismal State of Information Technology Planning in the Federal Government.”

The stories describe the testimony given at the Senate’s Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security yesterday.

Overall, the testimony paints a discouraging picture of IT risk management â€" or maybe better termed â€" risk mis-management â€" on a large number of government IT projects.

What I find more discouraging is the decision by OMB not to highlight IT projects that poorly manage their risks because, says OMB’s Karen Evans, that “highlighting problem projects would lead agencies to hide poorly performing ones.”

So, OMB admits that government agencies will resort to what amounts to lying about the status of their troubled IT projects if the public spotlight is turned on.

Of course, we all knew that, it is just nice that it is formally on the record.

Taxpayers also will be happy to hear that agencies can't be trusted to tell the truth about the status of their IT projects.

What also is discouraging is how many IT projects still get funding approval year after year given that they are either poorly planned or performing poorly or both: “OMB determined that 352 projects (totaling about $23.4 billion) [on its Management Watch List] are poorly planned. In addition, agencies reported that 87 of their high risk projects (totaling about $4.8 billion) were poorly performing. Twenty-six projects (totaling about $3 billion) are considered both poorly planned and poorly performing.”

Isn't continuing to fund poor planned, poorly performing or worse poorly planned and poorly performing IT projects just throwing good money after bad?

There is a difference between legitimate IT project failures and blunders - the former is where you do everything you are supposed to but hey, bad things still happen. The other is when you don't do the basics (like do proper planning) and things go south as a result.

From what's in the testimony, there are way too many potential IT project blunders being tolerated by OMB (and their funding agencies).