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Information Week

The second is two reports from the Government Accountability Office on the poor status of many federal IT projects, and a related Senate subcommittee hearing late last month. “Many agencies in the federal government are allowed to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on [IT] investments that are duplicative, lack clear goals, and are managed by unqualified staff,” said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., head of the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security, in a statement after the hearing.

Success is always difficult to value, both from an IT and user standpoint. Oh we can get the user statistics the IT benchmarks, (number of calls logged against the new system, number of trades completed). But it can be user experience that underpins the value of a project, it’s success, the application might do exactly as described but if the user community doesn’t like the logic, the way it works or where the buttons are, it can quickly change from a “I don’t like it”, to a “it’s rubbish”. Controlling the message, managing user expectations are key, mixed with the need to not try to do everything. If it’s a server database, focus on key fields and filling in/updating the data, you can then add the elements you need later, you might find it better to have fewer fields with more information rather than many empty fields.

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