The chairman of the Senate federal financial management subcommittee, Tom Carper, D-Del., has suggested scrapping large IT programs that are continually under-performing and over-budget.
"We owe it to taxpayers to pull the plug, in some cases, or go back to the drawing board when a project is continually over budget and is just not delivering what taxpayers deserve,” he told the subcommittee recently during a hearing focusing on high-risk IT projects and whether poor management leads to billions in waste.
The hearing focused on OMB oversight and its ability to analyze, track and evaluate IT projects deemed at-risk, representing about $10 billion in annual expenditures.
CIOs from the Departments of Commerce, Homeland Security, Treasury and Transportation were present to testify on how their agencies oversee project selection and oversight of high-risk projects, and described their roles in ensuring the accuracy and reliability of project planning, as well as how ongoing projects are monitored and managed.
