Federal IT dashboard not winning manager hearts

In the eight months since its debut, the improved Federal IT Dashboard, which rates U.S. agency technology projects and posts the results on the Internet for the world to see, has not won the hearts of all IT project managers.

Putting cost and performance data "on a public website was not warmly received by every agency," said Beth Ward, head of IT program and portfolio services at the Federal Aviation Administration. "My agency wasn't fond of it either." Managers worry about who will see the ratings their projects receive -- green for "normal," yellow for "needs attention," or red for "significant concern" -- and the amount of money they are spending on information technology. Governmentwide IT costs $80 billion a year. Agencies worry most that low ratings will catch the eye of Congress, or investigators at the Government Accountability Office, several government technology officials said. But it turns out, Ward said, "Everybody's looking at this data," including IT companies, watchdog groups, and particularly the Office of Management and Budget, which operates the dashboard and has substantial influence over technology spending. Poor dashboard ratings can lead to a TechStat, which is a detailed examination of a program followed by a face-to-face meeting between the agency chief information officer and the chairman of the agency's investment review board.