Smarter (Government) Technology
Eric Lundquist | Date: 07-01-09 | Comments: 2
- Feds build an IT spending dashboard to track $70 billion. It's good considering, but needs work to get top grades.
What if you were asked to
build a dashboard for your company that tracked IT spending? What would it look
like, how would you test it, and how would you improve the product? Now, what
if you had to build that dashboard not for your company, but for the whole federal
government spending apparatus?
Recently, the newly named federal
CIO Vivek Kundra launched the
IT U.S. Spending Website, which seeks to track how the government is spending our tax dollars on IT. A New
York Times article on the site notes that it was developed in
about six weeks and seeks to get a handle on how $70 billion in IT dollars are
being spent.
I took a quick run-through
on the site, and I'd give it a B+ for a site built so quickly and taking on
such a big task. I'd suggest more effort into not only tracking how those
dollars are being spent, but also measuring the effectiveness of the projects
being tracked. In a method similar to product ratings, you want to be able to
give five stars to projects that are on time, on budget and do what they are
intended to do.
The
very coolest step would be for techies both in the U.S. and worldwide to have an
opportunity to chime in and suggest easier and cheaper ways to spend those
dollars.
