[LINK] Transparency of government IT projects

Marghanita da Cruz marghanita at ramin.com.au
Wed Feb 15 13:36:19 AEDT 2012


Hi Jan,

The IT Dashboard is pretty old news but there would still be value in 
adopting it.

> Welcome to IT Dashboard - The Blog!
> Posted by Vivek Kundra on July 13, 2009 at 01:36 PM EST 
> It has been an exciting time since we launched the IT Dashboard. There have been more than 20 million hits so far, and we've received an encouraging response from members of Congress and the public in support of our efforts to increase transparency. One of those 20 million hits was from a prominent IT user; see for yourself here:
...
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Welcome-to-IT-Dashboard-The-Blog/>

The software has even been released on Sourceforge.
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/it-dashboard/>

Marghanita

Jan Whitaker wrote:
> This is fabulous. I wonder if the Australian government would even 
> consider 1/4 as much transparency and data access at this provides.
> 
> http://www.itdashboard.gov/ - Watch the over at the bottom of the 
> page to get an idea of what is available.
> Jan
> 
> 
> 
> Pressing the technology reset button
> 
> Mahesh Sharma
> February 15, 2012 - 12:03PM
> 
> When US President Obama first took office in November 2008, he 
> challenged the inaugural US Government chief information officer 
> Vivek Kundra to hit the reset button on technology in the public sector.
> 
> It was the first time an incoming president identified technology as 
> a key area of reform, alongside national security, healthcare and the 
> economy. The US government is the world's biggest IT shop, with a 
> $US80 billion budget and 12,000 systems globally.
> 
> Undaunted by governments' well-known reluctance to change, Kundra 
> relished the opportunity to lead the team known as 'tigre' 
> (technology innovation and government reform).
> 
> "I vividly remember how we got together for the first time, and the 
> president challenged us to think about how do you create a 21st 
> century government," Kundra said in Sydney this week.
> 
> "How do we actually make sure the investments being made in 
> technology are going to produce dividends for the American people?"
> 
> Armed with a vision and experience overhauling local government IT, 
> he quickly discovered federal government was a very different beast 
> with a preconceived notion of how technology was to be deployed.
> 
> His first day in the White House famously played out as President 
> Obama fought tooth-and-nail to use a Blackberry. Days later, Kundra 
> discovered more than $US20 billion in taxpayer money was invested in 
> IT projects that were years behind schedule and millions of dollars 
> over budget.
> 
> His solution was to boost individual accountability in the government 
> by promoting transparency. He declared before a senate hearing that 
> within 60 days he would launch an <http://www.itdashboard.gov/>online 
> IT dashboard to rank the performance of every IT project and every 
> CIO in federal government agencies publicly.
> 
> The idea was simple: projects were ranked then colour-coded red, 
> yellow, and green ($US27 billion of government IT spending was in the 
> 'red'), and the public could comment on the projects.
> 
> The dashboard is now used by the government to make IT budget 
> decisions and has been released to industry as 
> <http://sourceforge.net/projects/it-dashboard/>open source via 
> SourceForge to help others benchmark their projects. It met with some 
> criticism when first launched, as government agencies and third-party 
> organisations claimed to have found innacuracies, according to an 
> Information Week Government report.
> [snip - more at link: 
> http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/government-it/pressing-the-technology-reset-button-20120215-1t56p.html 
> ]
> 
> 
> Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
> jwhit at janwhitaker.com
> blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
> business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
> 
> Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
> sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
> ~Madeline L'Engle, writer
> 
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-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
Ramin Communications (Sydney)
Website: http://ramin.com.au
Phone:(+612) 0414-869202





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