The office of the Federal Chief Information officer has released the new Federal IT Dashboard, which reports on the progress of IT projects -- and related budgets -- of over 7,000 IT-related projects from nearly 30 federal departments, agencies and administrations.
In their own words:
The IT Dashboard provides the public with an online window into the details of Federal information technology investments and provides users with the ability to track the progress of investments over time. The IT Dashboard displays data received from agency reports to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), including general information on over 7,000 Federal IT investments and detailed data for nearly 800 of those investments that agencies classify as "major".
A quick review of the site reveals two important trends, and dozens of interesting observations. Regarding the former:
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There is "room for improvement" in managing IT at Federal agencies, but the quality of work varies widely, with strong self-reported performance at Defense and Treasury, and awful scores from Veterans Affairs.
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This is a big step for the Federal Government, and should provide a baseline for financial and scheduling performance updates on a wide range of issues in the future.
In his thoughtful review of the dashboard, O'Reilly Media (which runs, among many other influential properties, the Where 2.0 conference) Founder and CEO Tim O'Reilly calls it "radical transparency," and expands on this concept:
The dashboards are an incredibly ambitious undertaking. In the first place, there has never been a government-wide view like this of all IT spending, and the progress of projects. What's even more remarkable, though, is that the dashboards are being shared with the public. It's a bit like having your performance review posted on the company bulletin board for all to see.
O'Reilly quote his interview with Federal CIO Vivek Kundra:
It's a cultural transformation, in terms of recognizing that we are in the public square. The work that we do is work that is supposed to be performed in the interest of the American taxpayers. And so making visible how we're performing means fleshing out these complicated issues in the public square. Culturally, making the shift is much better than letting it hide under the veil of secrecy.
Naturally, we at AWhere applaud this progress, and look forward to days when more of the Federal budget and performance is so radically transparent. It will be a hard genie to put back in the bottle.
In lunchtime conversation this week, AWhere CEO John Corbett said of the initiative:
Accountability and transparency -- and outing senators who move money only to their area -- is the only way to clean up government. But these simple pie charts are just the first step. When we consider big projects, whether it's mapping WalMart Retail Link data, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation program research, or the Federal budgets, a geographical context is critical to understand the impact of the information. With these large data sets, and the general inconsistency of data formatting between them, it becomes nearly impossible for the human brain to distinguish meaning. When we can provide not only primary colored graphics, but easy-to-use location intelligence that identifies not just the "what," but the "where," citizens and analysts alike can begin to understand what this information means to them individually.
In other words, when people can see not only gross government overspending, but exactly where that money is going, it allows to focus our general outrage and possibly even do something about it. | 
