US wastes billions on rubbish IT
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The INQ
"US GOVERNMENT auditors at the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, have released a study (pdf) identifying more than 400 federal IT projects worth about $25 billion as poorly planned or underperforming. Though primly worded, that's auditor-speak for blowing the money and screwing the pooch.Senator Tom Carper (D-Delaware) is concerned that federal agencies are spending billions on IT projects that are redundant, lack clear objectives and are managed by incompetents, he suggested yesterday. Citing the GAO findings, he said it might be time for Congress to scrap some of those projects.
He also noted that, unfortunately, federal agencies have been consistently failing to provide Congress with adequate information about their IT projects to enable it to perform effective oversight. Even worse, almost 50 per cent of federal IT investments are hiding their project debacles from Congress, 'rebaselining' projects – sometimes repeatedly – to cover up cost overruns and mask schedule slippages."
