Pixel by Pixel Budget Cuts

President Obama goes "line by line" through the federal information technology budget on IT.USASpending.gov to ensure taxpayer dollars are used wisely.

The new visualization tool, known as the "IT Dashboard," is the brainchild of federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra. It strives to enliven and elucidate esoteric IT contracts for the public by charting the performance of such investments in the same way that market indexes chart the performance of stocks.

The site's slogan -- "Your window into the federal IT portfolio" - harkens back to Kundra's days as the former District of Columbia's chief technology officer, where he crafted a "stock market model" of program management. The system treated IT contracts like public companies, by assigning portfolio managers to oversee all projects and requiring quarterly evaluations of cost, time and value.