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what's the business case for recovery.gov

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What is the idea?

There's about $50M in the budget for recovery.gov.  One architecture that's been suggested would end up costing well over $300M.  Another option is very cheap, although heavily manual.  I have seen ideas ranging from a vague notion of using open source (presumably assembled and maintained by a systems integrator) to leading edge BI tools.  Given the options for spending versus value, there appear to be substantial tradeoffs.  In addition, there appear to options for acquiring the solution (i like the service-based options versus the custom build).  But, i am not sure that there is a program manager engaged who has run a $50M program before.  Recovery.gov is an investment in good government, performance and accountability.  Every good information technology solution which offers transformation as big as recovery.gov ought to have a business case that:

-- articulates measures of success (is it communication of results or achievement of accountability, and how do you measure it?).

-- evaluates options to acquire the features and functions, as well as business processes needed to achieve success,

-- and tracks or captures benefits recieved.

 

Why is it important?

I worry that there are so many ideas, the likely solution will be high risk and the whole transparency initaitive will die under its own weight.

Submitted by maforman (Other) on Apr 28, 2009

This idea is now closed to further comments.

Current number of stars: 3
based on 4 votes
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2 Comments

Member comment

I agree that a means of reconciling all of these diverse ideas into a coherent, cohesive, prioritized and consistently managed approach is needed. 

I therefore submit that a shared terminology (submitted to this site in a couple of ideas), that includes a consistently applied endeavor management life cycle methodology, metamodel, supporting-technology-specifications, implementation plan template, operating procedures, maintenance procedures, and assessment procedures, is needed. 

This management life cycle would provide a unifying management architecture to enable consistent and non-fragmented documentation and tracking of business cases (to-be state), transition plans, budgetary deliberations and decisions, performance monitoring and reporting, and mechanims to adjust as needed.

Such a management architecture can leverage and extend the current approaches to enterprise architecture (e.g., OMB FEA, DoDAF, TOGAF) and their largely inconsistent, incoherent, and non-cohesive results that are narrowly focused on IT investments, into a unified effort focused on all investments.

Comment from RoyERoebuck at One World Information System on Apr 29, 2009
Member comment

I share the previous commenter's concerns, but I think this process remains worth doing.  The open source development system is not necessarily the fastest, but uses peer review as way to weed out bugs or other issues.

One way to expedite the timeline would be to follow the Google model of competitively funding open source development projects.  The overall pricetag will be lower and the quality higher.

Comment from evacatherder at CubeSpace on May 02, 2009