OMB to refresh the Federal IT Dashboard

The Federal IT Dashboard, which is about to turn 17 years old in July, grew out of a series of technology project failures in the 2000s. The Office of Management and Budget wanted to bring transparency and oversight to IT projects as well as increase the stature of agency chief information officers in managing technology projects.

Aside from a 2022 technology refresh, the IT Dashboard has mostly remained the same for almost two decades. Yes, some data like tracking of software licenses has come and gone. The data around PortfolioStat, an Obama administration-era effort, has morphed into broader information sets, and OMB added new data like contacts and IT cost towers under the Technology Business Management (TBM) initiative.

But overall, the IT Dashboard has struck true to its two main goals.

While it provided some transparency about federal IT spending, the dashboard struggled to live up to its goals, especially around increasing oversight by making the data, CIO project ratings and other data public.

Former federal officials say the dashboard became a compliance exercise for CIOs, who updated the data only twice a year at most, and lawmakers lost interest in using it for oversight purposes over the last several years.

“Over the years, IT dashboard has become the tail wagging the dog. Agencies were reporting a lot of data that was not statutorily required and then OFCIO and agencies were expected to address whatever ‘problems’ stakeholders interpreted from that data,” said Kristine Lam, a former policy analyst in the Office of the Federal CIO and staff member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. “The truth is data from the IT dashboard is manually self-reported data, which was a result of building on top processes put in place to report data required in the Federal IT Acquisition and Reform Act (FITARA). By the time it was published on the IT dashboard, it was dated and not always accurate.”

A statutory realignment

To that end, OMB is reimagining how the Federal IT Dashboard works and the public data it provides.

Federal CIO Greg Barbacccia posted a note on the IT Dashboard website in April saying this version of the platform is remaining in steady state and a new, modern version is in the works.

“This tool, ITDashboard.gov, was built to give you insight into how the federal government invests in information technology (IT), providing a credible, accessible window into IT spending, performance, and decision-making. Unfortunately, it does not fully deliver on that promise today. We must do better. We can do better. And we will do better,” Barbaccia wrote. “To that end, we are taking steps to sunset this site, eliminating a costly, inefficient process and allowing agencies to focus on higher value activities. Effective April 2026, agencies will pivot to a streamlined state that refocuses on statutorily required data. We’ll continue to make that data publicly available to you.”

While specific details about the changes and a timeline has not been made public, OMB says the changes will address the data sprawl that the dashboard had become over the last decade.

“With this shift, we’re realigning with statutory requirements, ensuring visibility into major IT investments while reducing agency burden,” an OMB spokesperson said in an email to Federal News Network. “This enables agencies to focus on actively managing their tech stack. Agencies remain accountable to the federal CIO, and ultimately to taxpayers, who will continue to have access to statutorily required data in a more cost-efficient way.”

A few details about the future of the IT Dashboard emerged in the fiscal 2027 budget request, such as the General Services Administration’s desire to transition the oversight and management of the Federal IT Dashboard and the Governmentwide IT Accessibility Program Management Office to its Technology Transformation Service (TTS) from the Office of Governmentwide Policy. GSA’s current contract for the Federal IT Dashboard is a $3 million a year deal with Booz Allen Hamilton. GSA has spent about $25.4 million on the dashboard since it awarded the contract in 2021, according to USASpending.gov.

GSA uses the Federal Citizen Services Fund to pay for the platform. GSA also is asking to move the dashboard to a fully reimbursable model in its working capital fund.

The data in the dashboard has become less useful over time. CIOs weren’t updating how they rated their projects regularly. Too many projects received yellow or green ratings from the CIO, meaning they were meeting cost, schedule and performance metrics, despite the widespread belief most IT projects struggle to meet its goals.

Data not integrated into decision process

Lam said asking agencies to report on information such as whether software projects were being delivered incrementally and rating the risks of IT investments was probably useful in 2014 when Congress passed FITARA. But, she said, over the last 12 years the way agencies buy and use technology, such as the adoption of cloud services, and how technology is delivered to the government has drastically changed.

“It is worth asking whether this is right information needed to evaluate IT projects. There are metrics and key performance indicators used in the private sector that could be a more relevant and objective way to measure IT performance,” she said. “Additionally, at some point in the past, OMB required agencies to report granular information about IT investments such as cost pools and IT towers. There was probably a plan for all that data at some point, but it never became clear how that data was being used and it wasn’t being integrated into the decision making process.”

Tony Scott, the former federal CIO during the Obama administration and now CEO of Intrusion, said the dashboard was helpful during the cyber sprint after the massive Office of Personnel Management data breach.

But Scott said the metrics need to be relooked at as priorities and technologies change. Scott said the new OMB guidance around CIO authorities where the focus is on cost and utilization rates are a good start.

“CIO visibility and approval of spend related to IT contracts and digital services has long been the sticking point in effective governance, and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of government IT. Standardized metrics and more timely reporting will help accelerate progress, and provide for more responsive digital services,” Scott said in an interview.

Scott and Lam both say there are several new or different metrics that would be more valuable for both agencies and OMB.

New metrics needed

Scott said he’d like to see agencies measure things like customer experience and services as well as the cost per transaction.

“On the core infrastructure side, I still believe strongly that we need to focus on regular upgrades and transformation. All of the underpinnings that make this all work,” he said. “There still are mainframes and equipment from the 1990s, and everything in between. If you are not upgrading and replacing that, the compute or storage or network, you are not cost efficient and you also are dragging along vulnerabilities that existed in that old stuff.”

Lam said having data to show what technologies agencies are buying and building will provide the most benefits to OMB, to vendors and to the public.

“Having IT data available publicly is important for the community, but reporting dated or inaccurate information is not transparency. Putting numbers on the internet and declaring transparency is not always helpful for everyone and spending data should not be confused with outcomes. And on top of that, if it’s not used by decision makers what’s the point?” she said. “It seems like someone finally stopped and asked ‘Why are we collecting this data? Is it any good? How are we using it? Is it being used to address priorities like IT modernization, improving the way Americans interact with the government, increased cybersecurity or adoption of new technologies?’ A more efficient use of limited resources would be to find a way to clean and display IT procurement data – data that agencies already have and that is already being reported publicly – in a way that is meaningful to the federal IT community.”

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