Innovation and Accountability Drive Fed`s IT Dashboard - Platform Lets American People Be Watchdogs, Innovators
“This new platform enables the American people to be the
watchdogs, the auditors and innovators when it comes to how the United
States government is spending billions of
dollars in information technology,” he says. “The dream here is to have somebody—a
grad student at three in the morning—looking at various data sets and at the
intersection of those data sets they find value.”
Innovation and open government experts have already lauded
the dashboard as a good sign of how the federal government can leverage Web 2.0
technology to drive transparency.
According to Kundra, this IT dashboard is a prototype that
he hopes to scale across other types of federal spending categories if all goes
right in the future.
“The IT.USAspending.gov
[site] is a big step in the right direction. The key is to make data
available in a form that is manageable and not simply a tsunami of numbers,”
says Don Tapscott, chairman of nGenera Insight and a leading Web 2.0 author.
To some old-school business intelligence gurus entrenched in
the enterprise, the abbreviated six-week timeframe for such an ambitious
undertaking may seem like science fiction. But Kundra’s team managed to push
the dashboard out by maintaining a perfect-as-you-go mentality in keeping with
some of the facets of agile development that have captured the minds of the
more innovative thinkers within business intelligence of late. For example, at
the moment data fed into the dashboard is incomplete as all agencies catch up
to new demands for reporting.
“Is it perfect right now? Absolutely not. Is it going to get
better? Absolutely,” Kundra says. “As more and more people look at the Website,
we’re going to see the data improve significantly.
This approach to developing visualization and BI tools can
prove to be a valuable lesson to those in the private sector. Here is the
federal government, notorious for ice-age slow bureaucratic processes, tapping
into large data stores with lightning speed.
Unlike Kundra, many within the BI community find it hard to
adjust quickly and to lose the veil of perfectionism that keeps projects
tangled in development and testing long after users ask for the ability to tap
into specific sets of data. According to Ken Collier, a consultant for the
Cutter Consortium who specializes in agile development within BI, developers
need to rethink their attitudes.
“One of the things that I ask a lot of people is what it
means to really be finished,” Collier says. “Because, in my experience, most
systems are never finished until they're just ready to be buried. And, really,
any software project worth its salt is constantly undergoing new phases of user
development or enhancement.”
When Collier helps organizations bring agile philosophies to
their BI development, he encourages two-week cycles within which developers can
incrementally add functionality according to user feedback.
“I say, let’s get started, let’s put something out there,
let’s get feedback about whether it’s good or not, and then let’s adapt to that
feedback,” he says. “Then just continue the cycle. You know, wash, rinse and
repeat.”
The main objection he gets from traditionalists is that they
don’t want to go live with an application that turns users off, as they fear
they’ll lose support early and never regain it. Collier says hogwash: “I think
that by and large the BI user and customer community would really prefer to be shown something
early.”
A user comment on this articlePosted on: 07-17-09 | By: AnonymousI am a BI consultant and have seen what you mentioned countless number of times. It was refreshing to read your comment. You nicely summed up how I feel.
It seems at times Sr. IT Mgmt (at many companies) just wants to look good by creating work products that look good and do not focus on the value to their business.
In the end, there may not be much return on investment, but they are not held accountable.
A user comment on this articlePosted on: 07-10-09 | By: AnonymousIt's pretty sad that people still equate great BI dashboards with eye candy. This isn't rocket science, the data is the important thing, not the graphics (although the graphics can be useful if used appropriately).
Not much interaction with the data besides some filters. Seems that the current theme in BI tools is to put more lipstick on the pig that comprises the underlying data. If the data is bad, it's still an ugly pig, IMHO.
Perhaps more of a statement on senior management in corporate America today. Since they don't understand the data, a pretty picture is at least good to look at in their confusion.
It's a step in the right direction, but really far from being useful.
Looks pretty though.
A user comment on this articlePosted on: 07-10-09 | By: AnonymousI have to see this being used by bloggers or even the MSM. I can't wait to see people use this data to question the utter stupidity of much of the government's spending.
