Talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing – the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a report showing that the DHS, DOD, and HHS spent $321 million in IT spending for just 12 of their 590 total projects in the last 5 years.
The full report (31-page PDF) is here: Key Federal Agencies Need to Address Potentially Duplicative Investments
The report also states what we already know:
Information technology should enable government to better serve the American people. However, according to OMB, despite spending more than $600 billion on IT over the past decade, the federal government has achieved little of the productivity improvements that private industry has realized from IT.
And, then goes on to suggest that the government IT looks very similar to business IT.
Too often, federal IT projects run over budget, behind schedule, fail to deliver promised functionality, or are duplicative of other projects. In combating this problem, proper oversight is critical.
