Greater transparency for federal projects

Increased transparency will help technology projects stay on track, Obamaadministration officials told a Senate panel, reports Nextgov.

Lack of publicly available, up-to-date information on federal IT investments is part of the reason projects are delivered behind schedule and over budget, federal CIO Vivek Kundra testified before the Senate Budget Committee.

He said the IT spending dashboard started in June exemplifies the Obama administration's new approach, which aims to give the public more real-time information about the status of investments.

The technical snag which hit the online Common Admission Test (CAT) has more to do with project management skills than anything else, says Times of India.

"It could not be taken as the failure of online testing," says Upendra Kumar, MD of Uptec Computer Consultancy. He also says that an audit by the third neutral party into the incident can bring out the anomalies that led to the 'mismanaged' first-time online CAT.

"There were no dry runs of the system and no quality assurance checks," says Kumar. 'The system could have been tested over mock papers with dummy candidates appearing in them. The process could have led to a lot of snags being removed then and there.”

Focus on Training has released its schedule of professional training courses for 2010, says Cambridge Network. The emphasis is on business critical skill sets which will enable organisations to survive today's challenging economic climate.

In total there are 8 000 project management and IT course options to choose from. There is strong interest in courses which help organisations cope with change, and deliver project benefits more effectively.

Making training affordable is another key theme for 2010. Development director, Rex Gibson explains: “We reduced the cost of training both by introducing additional venues to avoid travel and hotel costs and through the launch of online learning options.”