OMB opens IT Dashboard performance metrics
(IT Dashboard Screenshot)
In the spirit of transparency, the Office of Management and Budget has opened agency IT performance metrics that it has kept private in the past.
OMB published metrics for the first quarter of fiscal year 2015 Tuesday in categories corresponding to federal CIO Tony Scott’s three core objectives: “driving value in federal IT investments, delivering world-class digital services, and protecting federal IT assets and information.”
OMB historically uses this data to lead discussions with agencies on performance and progress in IT priority areas. “These metrics supplement the information already available on IT Dashboard, offering a fuller picture of the state and effectiveness of Federal IT,” the introduction to the metrics on the IT Dashboard says. “Over time, we intend to increase the metrics and visualizations to better capture agency progress and any new policies or initiatives.”
With the new data, the public can now find on the IT Dashboard the breakdown of federal agencies’ IT spending and how effectively they delivered on projects’ projected schedule and budget, where agencies stand in securing IT assets, and how much time agencies devoted to digital services delivery. Additionally, OMB published data center consolidation progress data with the performance metrics.
“While data center closure numbers have always been publicly available, OMB is now also making the values of some of these optimization metrics available for public review on the IT Dashboard,” the CIO Council wrote in a blog post. “These enhanced metrics include facility utilization, storage utilization, and virtual hosts.”
In all, this is a move to be more transparent and involve the public in the progress of federal IT, OMB says. “Sharing these publicly expands this work by allowing anyone to track the progress that the Federal IT portfolio is making and is a part of our commitment to openness and transparency in government.”
