The Office of Management and Budget has completed a review of 16 "high-priority" agency IT projects, said White House officials during a Dec. 8 press call. Scroll down to the media player to listen to the call in full.

Of the 16 projects OMB officials discussed during the call, one project was terminated entirely, the delivery schedules of seven projects were speed up, and eight projects were scaled back and budgets were reduced, said Jeffrey Zients, deputy director for management at OMB. The canceled project is the Homeland Security Department's National Flood Insurance Program Information Technology System & Services. 

Click here for a list of 16 IT projects examined in this round of reviews along with the reviews' outcomes.

"We've now completed reviews of more than 50 major IT projects. Across those 50, we have significantly accelerated delivery; we've increased functionality coming online every few quarters, rather than coming online every couple years; and we've achieved, in total, $3 billion in budget reductions," said Zients.

During the call, Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra cited several projects that are being altered:

• The Interior Department's Consolidated Infrastructure Automation Telecom program had its lifecycle budget reduced by $500 million. The number of data centers will be consolidated from 210 to 115 and it will also save $36 million by leveraging cloud computing technology, said Kundra.
• The National Archives and Records Administration's Electronic Records Archives (ERA) Program's budget was cut by $215 million and the usage of the system has increased from 80 terabytes to 122 terabytes.
• The Agriculture Department's Web-based Supply Chain Management (WBSCM) was in development for four years and cost $94 million, and there was no deliverable, Kundra said. After Tech-Stat sessions, said Kundra, officials were able to get 7,000 users on the system just last month, he added.

Analyzing these federal IT projects one by one has allowed OMB to recognize the common failures of government IT and the Obama administration is using that information to shape the structural changes to agency IT, said Zients.

Click the audio player below to listen to the press call.

For more:
- see the list of 16 high-priority IT projects included in this round of reviews

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