Agencies Are Managing Investment Risk, but Related Ratings Need to Be More Accurate and Available, GAO-14-64, Dec 12, 2013

“As of August 2013, the Chief Information Officers (CIO) at the eight selected agencies rated 198 of their 244 major information technology (IT) investments listed on the Federal IT Dashboard (Dashboard) as low risk or moderately low risk, 41 as medium risk, and 5 as high risk or moderately high risk. However, the total number of investments reported by these agencies has varied over time, which impacts the number of investments receiving CIO ratings. For example, Energy reclassified several of its supercomputer investments from IT to facilities and Commerce decided to reclassify its satellite ground system investments. Both decisions resulted in the removal of the investments from the Dashboard, even though the investments were clearly IT. In addition, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) does not update the public version of the Dashboard as the President’s budget request is being created. As a result, the public version of the Dashboard was not updated for 15 of the past 24 months, and so was not available as a tool for investment oversight and decision making. Of the 80 investments reviewed, 53 of the CIO ratings were consistent with the investment risk, 20 were partially consistent, and 7 were inconsistent. While two agencies’ CIO ratings were entirely consistent, other agencies’ ratings were inconsistent for a variety of reasons, including delays in updating the Dashboard and how investment performance was tracked. For example, the Department of Justice downgraded an investment in July 2012, but the Dashboard was not updated to reflect this until April 2013. Further, the Social Security Administration resets investment cost and schedule performance baselines annually, an approach that increases the risk of undetected cost or schedule variances that will impact investment success.”