Openness vs. Project Management

Two discussions of note occurred on Thursday during the Senate Budget Committee hearing where Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra and other technology executives appeared.

First, Kundra said public, up-to-date information on federal IT projects would act as a strong force to keep information technology projects on schedule and on budget. He argued that in the past (in the Bush administration) the rationale behind the Office of Management and Budget making public information on projects on the so-called watch list didn't make sense. No one knew what the problems were and, theoretically, they were allowed to fester in the darkness.

Karen Evans, Kundra's predecessor, argued in 2008 that they didn't make public the details of the troubled projects because federal managers would clam up about their problems if they knew OMB would publicize them. From a Nextgov article:

Evans, administrator of the office of e-government at OMB, said the watchdog agency chose not to release detailed information on high-risk projects because singling out agencies for problems tends to discourage them from providing accurate, in-depth data on their projects. Evans said OMB was more interested in helping agencies improve the management of the projects than chastising them.

"How much shame and embarrassment do you bring to an agency? We're supposed to be helping them," she said, adding that OMB was an agency designed to help the executive branch accomplish its mission, not operate as an auditor.

At the time, periodic Tech Insider blogger Robert Charette found the statement discouraging. He wrote, "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."

Two points: 1) Will federal managers begin to hold back details in their reports if they know they will be made public? And 2) exactly how will public scrutiny put pressure on federal managers to begin to manage better?

Mark Forman, who was Evans' predecessor in the Bush administration and now with KPMG in Washington, always argued problems with IT projects could be traced back to a dearth of program and project management skills in the federal management ranks. Simple, managers just didn't have the proper training to do the job. Not sure how openness will fix that problem.

The second noteworthy topic that came up at the hearing was Kundra's argument that agencies developed projects on too grand a scale. Instead, "We need to break these contracts down into smaller chunks, move toward more fixed price contracts and hold vendors accountable to make sure they're delivering."

About 15 years ago, that was called modular-based procurement, building projects out one functional piece at a time. The idea was a big part of the procurement reform discussion in the mid 1990s. It's still being discussed. But again, the argument is that publicly available information will force agencies to approach projects in smaller chunks.

But isn't this, too, a training problem, not a transparency issue? While making the IT project information available serves a democratic purpose and shows how agencies are spending taxpayer dollars -- both important pursuits -- wouldn't the agencies and the administration be better served by hiring more skilled managers and training those who don't have the necessary program management skills?

Finally, there wasn't much talk about the lean project management corps. It's not that the Obama administration isn't aware of it. In March President Obama issued a memo ordering OMB to undertake an in-depth review of the government's contracting apparatus. How to strengthen it seems to be a pertinent subject that could have been a bigger part of the conversation during the Senate hearing. That may be as important as open government.