Administration slashes two more huge IT projects

The Obama administration will cancel a $200 million information technology project at the Department of Justice and scale back another at Interior as part of an ongoing review.

Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra announced the cancellation of DOJ's Litigation Case Management System during an address to the Federal Chief Information Officers Council on Sept 20. He said the project was years behind schedule and well over the original cost estimate of $128 million. "Initiated in 2006, this project would have cost an additional $193 million to complete, twice the original estimate," CIO Kundra said. "Our actions to date are the initial steps in making the federal government work better for the American people and send a clear message that we are no longer willing to throw good money after bad money."

The project was intended to provide a department-wide system to track cases, but the government has achieved little return despite having invested $64 million to date. Instead Justice will update systems for each office individually. The main contractor for the system is Computer Sciences.