New IT Dashboard from Federal CIO Vivek Kundra

The Federal government’s new CIO, Vivek Kundra, launched a Federal IT Dashboard today. It is a good tool to first in understanding where the money is going. It looks like about $74B is going toward IT investments, and it is not  surprinsing to see that the DOD gets close to half that spend (45%).

My first impression of the site was that it had a sleek look and a nice feature of automatically advancing through the information, but I got a bit puzzled about the information I was actually looking at. After years of designing IT dashboards I can say that graphics without numbers and labels may look cleaner, but they don’t tell you much.  By digging a little deeper on the site we can find the details on how the evaluations are performed, but it would be nice to make it more obvious on the home page. Here is how the evaluations are made:

The evaluations are split between Cost, Schedule and Agency CIO Evaluations. Cost evaluations are done using a point system. At the top of the scale, less than 5% variance from planned is 10 points and at the bottom, 50% or greater is zero. Schedule evaluations also use a point system where up to 30 days late is 10 points and 90 or more days late  is zero. For the CIO evaluation, the factors are:

• Risk Management
• Requirements Management
• Contractor Oversight
• Historical Performance
• Human Capital
• Other (factors that the CIO deems important to forecasting future success)

Each factor is evaluated using the following rating:

This information, which I refer to as Portfolio Health Management in my first blog, is not only critical, but a key project portfolio management practice. But does it deserve the front page of the federal IT dashboard? As I mentioned in my first paragraph, one of the key benefits is to see how much is spent where. I would prefer to see on the right side the type of projects funded by each agency (spending categories) like IT Security, Infrastructure, Informational, Efficiency, etc. It would also be nice to see the total budget for each agency as well as how much has been allocated, how much is in progress, how much has been spent on canceled projects, how much is completed successfully, etc.

Finally, for a deeper dive, I look forward to seeing the upcoming features stated on the website. More analytics through the Earned Value Management (EVM) approach where applicable will be very beneficial. Using the PMI terminology, the Cost Performance Index (CPI) and the Schedule Performance Index (SPI) would especially be more telling than a simple green, yellow, or red indicator. I’m also eager to see how flexible the ”Participation” features will be:

• Additional chart customization features
• Agency-generated content such as widgets or mash-ups using IT Dashboard data
• Personal portfolios (create your own portfolio of investments to watch and subscribe to updates to these investments)

Overall, I think this is major progress in the right direction for a transparent federal government, but a dangerous tool if misunderstood by the viewers.