Open source IT Dashboard tracks govt spending

IT Dashboard tracks US government IT spending

The United States Government has open sourced the IT Dashboard project, a Web-based application designed to track IT spending used by CIOs of government agencies.

The IT Dashboard is an online portal (http://www.itdashboard.gov/IT Dashboard) where federal government agencies and the public can view details of IT spending and project management.

Launched in June 2009 by President Barrack Obama, IT Dashboard includes general information on more than 7000 IT investments and detailed data for some 800 “major” investments across 27 federal agencies.

IT Dashboard is an extension to the open source Drupal content management system and uses the MySQL database.

The initial code release was posted on the SourceForge.net open source portal last week making it available to all governments.

Designed for use by government departments, there’s no reason why government businesses, including the likes of NBN Co, can’t also benefit from the software.

Agency CIOs are responsible for evaluating and updating select data through interfaces provided by IT Dashboard.

Each project carries a CIO “rating” where the CIO rates each investment using a set of pre-established criteria.

“As a rule, the evaluation should reflect the CIO's assessment of the risk and the investment's ability to accomplish its goals,” according to IT Dashboard.

Evaluation factors include risk management, requirements management, contractor oversight, historical performance, human capital and other factors the CIO deems important to forecasting future success.

Last year Computerworld Australia reported on the increasing popularity of the Drupal CMS among Australian government agencies, including the Prime Minister’s office, so from a technology standpoint a local IT Dashboard implementation is possible.

Recommended reading: Is this the toughest gig on the planet? - an interview with the first Federal CIO of the United States, Vivek Kundra.

Follow Rodney Gedda on Twitter: @rodneygedda

Follow CIO Australia on Twitter: @CIO_Australia

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