1. Tell me about the Q4 FY2008 Management Watch List (MWL)?

As of September 30, 2008, there were 216 major IT investments remaining on the Management Watch List, representing over $20 billion in FY 2009 IT budget requests. The 216 investments represent a 63 percent decline from the original Management Watch List of 585 investments announced in February with the President's Budget release. This large decrease was largely due to improved agency inspector general (IG) assessments of the agency's Certification and Accreditation process and the agency's Privacy Impact Assessment process.

2. Tell me about the Q4 FY2008 High Risk List (HRL)?

The High Risk List (HRL) now includes 549 projects that were determined to be high risk due to varying factors, such as complexity of the project, scope or level of importance. There was a significant jump in the number of projects (216) on the Final FY 2008 HRL, due to OMB's policy of moving all Q4 MWL investments to the HRL. These 549 projects represent over $26 billion in FY 2009 IT budget requests. Even with the list including the Q4 FY2008 MWL investments, the 549 HRL projects still represent a 9 percent decline from the original High Risk List of 601 projects announced in February with the President's Budget release. To continue to foster transparency, OMB has continued to release the reasons for inclusion on the High Risk List.

3. What is VUE-IT?

VUE-IT stands for Visualization to Understand Expenditures in Information Technology. VUE-IT is a tool to improve understanding of the annual Federal Government Information Technology investments made through the President’s Budget. VUE-IT organizes IT investments by agency and bureau, as well as by the Federal Enterprise Architecture’s (FEA) service groupings.

VUE-IT incorporates OMB’s High Risk List (HRL) and Management Watch List (MWL), management tools, used to monitor IT budget planning and project execution.

Through the integration of IT Investment, FEA, and IT management tools, VUE-IT provides greater transparency and enables increased understanding of the Federal IT portfolio.

4. What can I accomplish by using VUE-IT?

The primary use of VUE-IT is to understand the Federal IT portfolio through the lens of the HRL and MWL. VUE-IT can also be used to identify opportunities to:

• Improve mission performance through greater collaboration across investments with a shared mission nexus;
• Realize cost savings or avoidance through harmonization of duplicative or overlapping investments;
• Share solutions, services, and information; and
• Leverage economies of scale and knowledge;

5. How do I use VUE-IT?

VUE-IT provides users with a drill down browsing capability. This capability allows users to navigate from higher levels of summarized data to reveal detailed information. For example, users may view all investments being made by the FBI within the Department of Justice, or all investments across the entire Federal Government with a primary mission of supporting Law Enforcement.

On each page, users can enable filters associated with the HRL and MWL. Turning on the filters for both the HRL and MWL will produce the intersection between these lists, or the collection of investments that are on both lists. Alternatively, users can select the filter for both the MWL and the HRL – this filter shows the union of the two lists, or investments that are on either list.

Users can also sort the tables shown on most pages to display in ascending or descending order for each column. Further, on the agency-based pages, there is a column showing “unmapped HR” projects. These are projects that are on the HRL but are as yet unmapped to a specific investment in the agencies Exhibit 53. Users can also drill out to see detail on unmapped HRL projects, including the rationale for their inclusion on the HRL.

At the lowest level of drill down, VUE-IT provides the users with details about the IT investment or project. For example, for High Risk Projects, VUE-IT provides the reasons why the agency or OMB views the identified project as high risk. For the Management Watch List, VUE-IT provides the OMB identified weaknesses in the Major IT Investment planning information and the evaluations OMB provided the investment as part of OMB’s review of the agency Exhibit 300.

6. Tell me about the underlying concepts and data?

The tag line, transparency provided by the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA), refers to the use of FEA Business Reference Model (BRM) and Service Reference Model (SRM) service groupings in the agency’s IT investment portfolio included in the President’s Budget. The FEA is a tool used by agencies and OMB to plan and manage IT and IT-enabled investments. A key aspect of the FEA is grouping like with like across a range of dimensions to enable a cross-Government view of similar investments.

The BRM is a taxonomy (hierarchical classification scheme) that identifies the mission areas or Lines of Business (LoB) describing the functions of government that deliver services to citizens, support the delivery of services to citizens, or manage government resources. The SRM is a taxonomy that identifies the cross-cutting, organization unit independent, services that underlie the business functions.

Two key management tools used by OMB in the management of IT Investments and projects are the HRL and MWL. The HRL attempts to identify projects that are intrinsically risky for reasons such as being cross-Government in nature or politically sensitive. For example, all of the E-Gov initiatives are on the HRL by definition because they are cross-Government in scope. The criteria for inclusion on the HRL are published in Chapter 9 of the Analytical Perspectives Volume of the FY 2009 President’s Budget.

The MWL identifies investments that have a planning weaknesses. This assessment is made based on evaluation of agency submitted Exhibit 300s during OMB’s budget review process, and through quarterly assessments of agency remediation activity. Criteria for assessing investment proposals are published in Chapter 9 of the Analytical Perspectives Volume of the FY 2009 President’s Budget. Note major IT investments on the MWL for the entire fiscal year without remediation are automatically viewed as intrinsically risky and moved to the HRL.

The FEA mappings are primary mappings – many investments have secondary mappings, but for accessibility we are limited to the primary mappings.

The investment details are based on agency reported information provided in their Exhibit 53s. The HRL inclusion criteria are based on agency reported information provided in each agency’s quarterly high risk report to OMB. The MWL data comes from the OMB evaluations of the agency’s supplied Exhibit 300s and any supporting information provided by the agency to remediate planning weaknesses. In some cases, agencies have been unable to report the precise linkage of projects on their HRL to the Exhibit 53 information. These are represented by OMB’s column for “Unmapped HR” investments in the VUE-IT tool. OMB still provides the HRL details with exception to the IT spending amounts, as without a proper linkage OMB is unable to determine the estimated spending amounts associated with these projects.

7. What about data quality?

Overall, the quality of the data is good for drawing general conclusions, or identifying areas to use as points of departure where stakeholders are pursuing targeted outcomes.

However, a few caveats should be kept in mind:

• In some cases there is missing data. Three examples are:

  i. Unmapped HRL projects as previously described

  ii. in the agency – bureau hierarchy, some missing bureau designations

• Agencies have traditionally had discretion in how they choose FEA mappings for their investments. This leads to a certain level of inconsistency across agencies.
• In some cases, agencies map to the mission area of the agency rather than the mission area of the investment when they select their FEA categorization.
• These are primary mappings. In some cases the investments are intended to work across organization units, or will support multiple mission areas.
• Some of the HRL projects are included as part of larger agency investments on the Exhibit 53(These can be identified at the lowest level of drill down as items with UPIs ending in "-07"), therefore:

  i. The investment counts may be slightly different than the number of investments indicated in other information technology spending reports, as the more detailed layer of projects are included

  ii. The dollar values are not distinguished (indicated with $0) from the value of the overall investment (These can be identified at the lowest level of drill down with the same UPI, but ending in "-00" or "-24")

OMB intends to work with the agencies and enhance VUE-IT, to continually improve data quality, completeness, and validity. Also, with stakeholder use and inquiry, OMB and agencies will be able to identify further opportunities for improvement.

8. If I have a question, comment, or feedback, how and to whom should I ask it?

Please feel free to direct comments or questions about specific investments, and their status on the MWL or the HRL, to the agencies in question. Contact information for agency CIOs can be found on the CIO Council website ( cio.gov ).

OMB is committed to improving the utility, quality, and usefulness of VUE-IT. Please direct any comments, questions, or other feedback to OMB via the VUE-IT Requirements Community Wiki.

9. Can OMB put VUE-IT in context to OMB’s other data visualization and transparency sites?

OMB recognizes that it is uniquely positioned within the Federal Government to integrate and make accessible data and information to help stakeholders gain insight into Federal budgetary planning, spending, and performance.

OMB publishes the President’s Budget at www.budget.gov. Federal spending is consolidated and published at www.usaspending.gov. Performance of agencies is measured and reported upon at www.expectmore.gov. Information about earmarks can be found at earmarks.omb.gov.

The Federal IT Budget information can also be found on Egov.gov (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/g-9-budget_highlights.html).

10. Where is OMB going with VUE-IT?

That depends primarily on the feedback OMB gets from stakeholders, both internal and external to the Executive Branch. We are serious about making sure VUE-IT evolves based on stakeholder requirements.

Some ideas being developed in the FEA Labs include:

• Cross-linking with agency program performance data;
• Enabling export of data from the pages to better enable end user analysis and reporting;
• Integrating more information on cross-Government (E-Gov) initiatives;
• Linking to agency posted Information Resources Management (IRM) Strategic Plans, investment proposal details (Exhibit 300s), and Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs); and
• Trending and benchmarking reports.

As OMB further develops the quality, timeliness, and validity of agency cost and schedule (earned value) reporting, we will look for opportunities to appropriately leverage that into future enhancements of VUE-IT. We are also exploring integration of FISMA-related information.

OMB is also exploring ways to increase transparency with the FEA:

• Linking to agency posted Enterprise Transition Plans;
• Overlaying agency-provided segment architecture data; and
• Explicit identification of cross agency segment architecture collaboration.

11. Has a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) been conducted on VUE-IT?

The Privacy Impact Assessment associated with VUE-IT can be found here.

12. Has OMB published a Schedule of Records (SOR) for VUE-IT?

The Schedule of Records for VUE-IT may be accessed here.