IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

“The Strategy and Action Plan has four key focus areas. First, all new services will be offered online by 2017. Online options are faster, easier and cheaper to use and will eventually become the default option for most people,” says Mr Tremain.

Already wobbling under low margins, currency fluctuations and an undermining economy, the IT Industry faces a trust deficit in the form of unlimited accountability, unfavorable payment terms, unreasonable legal frameworks, fall clause, obscure SLAs and lack of clarity in e-governance projects in India.

The initiative, dubbed “Academy of ICT Essentials for Government Leaders”, was launched on Thursday at the CICT office in Quezon City, with top executives from the United Nations Asian and Pacific Training Center for Information and Communications Technology for Development (UNAPCICT) attending the event.

Roxie Murphy, director of GSA’s E-Government Strategies Division in the Office of Governmentwide Policy, said agency IT workers are applying the CIO Council’s Value Measuring Methodology to three e-government projects.

The "90/90 Rule" of project schedules goes like this: the first 90 percent of a project takes 90 percent of the time and effort; the remaining 10 percent of the project takes the other 90 percent of the time and effort.

Despite many examples of good practice, there is still a lack of professionalism in software engineering that could even be dangerous in safety-critical systems. Britain is failing to produce software engineers and managers with the IT and project management skills to commission and execute complex IT projects

Greater efficiency while improving customer service in local authorities is possible through end-to-end process streamlining and joining up technologies but managers in councils don’t have the complete skill sets required to progress change programmes they are asked to implement.

But the lack of experience of senior responsible owners (SROs) and the failure of advising bodies to support them could result in a project failing, the Commons public accounts committee said on Tuesday.

Committee chairman Edward Leigh said: "Not all major government IT projects end up on the rocks: as the successful Payment Modernisation Programme and Pension Credit have shown.

There are three main elements of the package, it was announced on 8 December 2003.

The public sector has a bad reputation when it comes to IT. Frequent project failures have led to central government being lambasted in the press, and yet with the emphasis now on driving efficiency in government, tightening up public sector IT becomes more important than ever.

Meshing’s take on technology projects and the world of business may be seen by many as cynical, but as playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, “The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”

“It was in 2007 when we realized we needed to make some strategic investments in our inter-systems,” said Steven Santos, the department’s development assistant manager. “We were absorbing redundant data entry, tasks were taking days to complete, and we were getting complaints from the public about wanting more modern services.”

As a remedy for major IT projects that fail or underachieve, OMB has encouraged agencies to complete projects incrementally. In 2010, the office called for agencies to deliver functional parts of their major projects at least every 12 months, and later shortened it to every six months.

Agencies are accustomed to the waterfall process, said Tim McCrosson, a senior policy analyst within the Office of Management and Budget office of e-government and information technology. He spoke during an event put on by AFCEA-Bethesda in Rockville, Md.

A proposed rule change to the Federal Acquisition Regulation would standardize EVM execution and use for all major federal government acquisitions, including information technology services. Other likely candidates for EVM oversight include supplies and equipment and construction, a Federal Register notice states. Comments are due by June 7.

"We've made some tough decisions across the board," Kundra said during an interview with Nextgov. In February, the Veterans Affairs Department announced it had terminated 12 IT projects using its own performance assessment tool -- the Program Management Accountability System -- and by preparing data for the IT Dashboard, an Office of Management and Budget Web site that tracks federal IT investments. VA initially suspended the projects and 33 other troubled systems in July, pending further review.

"Most of the policies, procedures and practices that are used on major IT acquisitions date back to the 1990s, 1980s or even earlier,'' according to the report from the TechAmerica Foundation. "Such an infrastructure is poorly suited to supporting the interactive, incremental and collaborative processes of agile/incremental development."

In another report released Monday, the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council recommends 12- to 18-month action plans to tackle the issues of IT governance, collaboration and communication.