Federal CIO Vivek Kundra has started new accountability sessions called TechStat meetings, to be held with department officials and will be conducted in order to assess their IT projects.
The goal of these sessions is to ultimately create a more efficient government. Kundra started that the Obama administration is aiming to leverage the power of technology in order to do so.
As the result of these “TechStat†meetings, the administration will be familiar with which projects are running smoothly and which need to be terminated or reshaped. In a way, these meetings are just a way to review these investments.
According to Government Computer News, Kundra said these meetings are “a very relentless pursuit of oversight.†Kundra, along with other officials, have already met with the EPA CIO and discussed an IT project that is a year behind schedule, as well as over budget.
The outcome of the meeting was a call for action, in the form of a memo, on what steps need to be taken to get the project running on track again. TechStat meetings will call for more accountability across other departments as well. He is already holding 3-4 meetings a week with agency CIO’s and this is said to increase even more in the future.