Participating in an Office of Management and Budget-led TechStat session "was really one of the worst experiences of my time in this job," said State Department Chief Information Officer Susan Swart.

"[But] it worked. It eliminated duplications, saved money and came up with a better project," said Swart, while speaking at a May 4 event in Washington, D.C. sponsored by TechAmerica.

"The program managers and business owners came to justify their systems and that was a good conversation. It really focused things down into developing a plan. It got visibility to a higher level than similar situations ever really got in our department," she added.

Since February 2010 OMB has held TechStat meetings to review information technology systems the White House says are in danger of running over cost or schedule--or which already have done so. OMB selects systems for TechStat review according to data available on the IT Dashboard, although the Government Accountability Office has questioned the reliability of data posted there.

The problem of data quality is also a challenge for internal TechStat sessions, said Chris Niedermayer, Deputy CIO at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Earlier this year, federal agencies were instructed to hold at least one internally-managed TechStat meeting by utilizing a TechStat Toolkit available on cio.gov.

"We're a data-driven organization. They biggest problem we've had with that is getting to an authoritative source of the data. If people point you to something that's not factual, it can skew the results," said Niedermayer May 5 at a Washington, D.C., event sponsored by InformationWeek called the "Government IT Leadership Forum."

"If there is some question about the quality of the information you are reporting, then I think I think it could be questionable about are we actually achieving the results."

The data from several agencies' internal TechStat sessions now feeds the OMB's IT dashboard, according to Niedermayer--magnifying any data errors that may exist at the agency level.

"If [OMB] wants to dig deeper--which is what they do in a TechStat--and come in and ask the tough questions, I wouldn't want to be an agency that skewed the data if they came looking, because as you know, they apportion the dollars," said Niedermayer.

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