IT Dashboard: Selected Agencies’ Investment Ratings Fail to Fully Consider Risks

Filed 1h ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk

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Amazing Plan

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Creator:McLoughlin Brothers · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

GAO reviewed 53 major federal IT investments worth $35 million or more and compared agencies' own Chief Information Officer risk ratings against its independent assessment. The ratings matched only 27 times; in 24 cases GAO found more risk than agencies reported, and in just two cases less, with 21 of the 53 ratings found to be outdated past the point agencies' own processes required updates.

The report warns that a stalled system modernization project could keep displaying an outdated low-risk label while quietly falling further behind, precisely the blind spot the dashboard was built to prevent. OMB announced in April it will sunset the public Dashboard for a new streamlined system but gave no timeline, while ignoring a previous GAO recommendation to improve oversight of troubled investments.

GAO issued 17 new recommendations to nine agencies; five agreed, one agreed partially, two disagreed outright, and one didn't say either way.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A risk dashboard that agencies get to fill out themselves, on their own schedule, is less an early warning system than a report card students write for themselves and mail home. Replacing it with a new system sounds promising until you notice nobody said when, which is its own kind of low-risk rating. The projects that are actually behind schedule don't care what color the dashboard says they are.

Source: Read the original at GAO → Scored: Amazing Plan · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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