Federal Manager's Daily Report

Agencies are managing investment risk using the IT Dashboard OMB launched in 2009 but related ratings need to be more accurate and available, GAO has said.

It said that as of last August the CIOs at eight agencies rated 198 of their 244 major IT investments listed on the Dashboard as low risk or moderately low risk, 41 as medium risk, and 5 as high risk or moderately high risk, but that the total number of investments reported by these agencies has varied over time, impacting the number of investments receiving CIO ratings.

For example, Energy reclassified several of its supercomputer investments from IT to facilities and Commerce decided to reclassify its satellite ground system investments, according to GAO-14-64.

It said those decisions resulted in the removal of the investments from the Dashboard, even though the investments were clearly IT. Further, OMB does not update the public version of the Dashboard as the President’s budget request is being created, so the public version of the Dashboard was not updated for 15 months out of a 24-month period.

GAO called on OMB make Dashboard information available independent of the budget process, and asked the agencies to appropriately categorize IT investments and address identified weaknesses.