US Gov. Launches Web Site To Track IT Spending

andy1307 writes "Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, announced on Tuesday a new Web site designed to track more than $70 billion in government IT spending, showing all contracts held by major firms within every agency. The (Flash-heavy) site, USAspending.gov, shows detailed information about whether IT contracts are being monitored and budgets being met. The data also show which contracts were won through a competitive process or in a no-bid method (the latter approach is criticized by good-government advocates for excluding firms from business opportunities). Each prime contractor is listed as well as the status of that project; sub-contractors are not yet shown."

Comments

Okay what about military, etc?

[Neuroticwhine]

Wow this is great.... now what about a detailed log of other governmental spending? Be nice to know where those orders for $20,000 toilet seats are coming out of.

Re:Okay what about military, etc?

[ratnerstar]

The summary is misleading. As best I can figure out, the site tracks ALL government spending, not merely IT. It's a little confusing because they provide a special tool just for IT investments -- the "IT Dashboard" -- which gives you some additional reports. But information about all (non-classified) spending is included on the main site. If you're interested in the DoD, look here.

How much..

[kazade84]

of that $70 billion was spent developing that site? :p

Re: How much..

[Black Parrot]

And how much productivity blown off today, as people try to figure out how to use it, then search it for projects they can complain about.

But here's the kicker:

"I talked to the CIO Council and saw the data change overnight," Kundra said. "It was cleaned up immediately when people realized it was going to be made public."

Wonder how much of the data changed in the "looks better now" direction.

I'm Not Going to Lie

[eldavojohn]

This data really upsets me. From the top 100 recipients this year:

2 NEW YORK STATE DEPT OF HEALTH NY $18,335,672,042 Percent of total: 5.764%
3 TEXAS HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES COMMISSION TX $13,514,862,175 Percent of total: 4.248%
4 PENNSYLVANIA DEPT OF PUBLIC WELFARE PA $11,168,181,944 Percent of total: 3.511%

The other states fall in at around or less than 1%. I understand those states are high population but that should mean more tax income to the state. So you're telling me that someone who lives in Minnesota is paying Federal taxes to support New York Health Dept and Texas Human Services Dept? I really don't like that when states like Texas are all about "smaller government" and "lower taxes" or that people flock to NYC to be at the "center of the world" yet their taxes don't reflect that cost and other states pick it up. So what, you just shift your debt off to other states and freeload on Federal relief? From the data, around 2007 this started becoming a huge disparity between states. Why? You switched to Vista? Ridiculous.

Re:I'm Not Going to Lie

[ratnerstar]

Why leave off California? Anyway, I think a more valid comparison would be total dollar spent (see here -- the ranking is pretty much the same) rather than just the largest projects this year. Also, what you really should be doing is looking at net Federal expenditures per state, i.e. the difference between the Federal taxes paid and the Federal grants received. That would tell you whether Minnesota is actually subsidizing New York. The site in question doesn't cover that issue, but here's a pdf from The Tax Foundation that does. Look over the data yourself, but it looks to me like New York is subsidizing everyone else.

VUE-IT

[highwind81]

If you don't like flash here's another view of the Federal IT Budget:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/vue-it/index.html
I'm not sure if it's the same data but it let you have the raw data too.

Here is how fare and competive bidding works.

[jellomizer]

It looks good on paper. However this is what happens.

First lets stop and realize there is a deal of stress and frustration to have to deal with different people all the time (contractors) and it is generally easier and safer to deal with the same people (you know the level you can trust them and you know their quality of their work etc... All in all makes it easier to manage them).
That said IT managers of government agencies really don't want to put stuff out to bid. As it is a lot of work for them, they have to battle with the Union first to make a case for their need (normally with all their staff saying I don't want to do this) for hiring outsiders to do the work. Then you need to make a full spec and then put it out to bid get the best bid and then when the people start they will start out slower because they don't know your work. (Turnover cost is about 150% more then using the same people)

So what happens? Well they make 1 or 2 actual completive bids for some small projects and see if they like the people. Once they know them and like them and get to know their skill sets for the next larger project they word the bid to match that persons skill sets so the person who meets the requirements is the person they look for. That is why if you look at these bids that come out there is a lot of very odd requirement say for a Web project asking for 13 years of Cobol Experience or Linux experience for making a Windows app. Then they used that canned bid over and over again to keep them there.

Why use contractors at all? Because the Union allows the people to say no to any job they don't want to do. And a lot of jobs are based on Bad Ideas which are very political, but really doomed to failure. So you get the contractor to do it. If it fails then it is the evil contractors fault. But you hire him again because you really know the project was doomed anyways. The contractor is fine to be the bad guy if you keep hiring him again.

A good first step towards accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a good first step towards accountability.

Personally, I'd like to vote on the overall budget expenditures for the big 20 departments. We shouldn't be surprised when departments and programs we love don't get much funding while others we dislike very much do. Most citizens don't have any valid idea how much money goes into any program. Most think we spend 50% on the military and 10% on NASA. Those numbers were significantly lower a few years ago (22%/0.5%). The thing that bothers me most is Social Security is like 55% of the total budget. That's just crazy. Wild swings in spending shouldn't be allowed even if we vote. No more than a 5% change in any department per year, so they can smoothly transition to the next annual budget amounts up or down.

We need to carefully monitor http://it.usaspending.gov/?q=content/investments-rated-agency until all of them are reporting. Only a few (less than 5) out of 30+ departments are currently reporting.

Perhaps I'm crazy.