From across the pond

ByElizabeth Harrin Last updated: Uncategorized

This week, in between watching the complete DVD box set of Series 1 of Un Paso Adelante, the Spanish version of Fame (what is Diana’s problem?), and trying too many perfumes in Sephora, I read an interesting report about the management of US government projects.

The US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is required by law to oversee the risks and results of major investments in IT systems made by government agencies. The idea is that it then reports to Congress on the programme of activities and the total benefits resulting from the capital investment.

Like any Programme Office, it has defined processes including:

  • Management Watch List. This list is supposed to identify poorly planned projects. There are 857 major IT projects in George W. Bush’s budget for the fiscal year 2007. OMB placed 263 projects (that’s about $10 billion) on its Management Watch List.
  • High risk projects list. Established in August 2005 to identify projects needing special attention because they aren’t meeting performance criteria.

These two processes have between them identified about 300 projects (that’s an IT budget of $12 billion) in need of attention. The Government Accountability Office has just issued a study on why so many projects are ending up on the lists. The key findings are:

  • The Management Watch List may be undermined by inaccurate and unreliable data and lack of documentation.
  • The criteria for identifying high risk projects were not always consistently applied. Projects that appeared to meet the criteria were not identified as high risk, and this random approach means there is no confidence in the resulting data.
  • There is no central tracking system so OMB can’t analyse progress on a government-wide basis.

Projects without documentation….. Evaluation criteria applied inconsistently…..No central tracking…..Remind you of an office you’ve worked in?

The report also gives some recommendations about what OMB can do to improve the management of risky projects. They include:

  • Help agencies improve the accuracy and reliability of their data about high risk projects
  • Consistently apply risk criteria
  • Develop a single tracking system.

Interestingly, OMB disagreed with the recommendations and I’m not surprised. They are hardly rocket science. Everyone likes to believe the information they report is accurate and reliable but do you really believe the steering group reports you send out? Surely they represent the best possible picture of your project – or if you are trying to get your sponsor to make a decision, the worst possible situation. There is always a subtext to communication.

Risk criteria are interpreted and applied by humans and we are naturally not very good at keeping our personal prejudices and opinions out of our decision-making. And a single tracking system? It’s a great idea to be able to report programme activity and do analysis on a wider scale. But given their record with large-scale IT investment I’m glad I’m not the project manager trying to implement a single tracking database.

For the full report, download the .pdf here.

Elizabeth Harrin wearing a pink scarf

Project manager, author, mentor

Elizabeth Harrin is a Fellow of the Association for Project Management in the UK. She holds degrees from the University of York and Roehampton University, and several project management certifications including APM PMQ. She first took her PRINCE2 Practitioner exam in 2004 and has worked extensively in project delivery for over 20 years.
Elizabeth is also the founder of the Project Management Rebels community, a mentoring group for professionals. She's written several books for project managers including Managing Multiple Projects.