White House wants IT results in 90 days

What would it take for an IT shop to solve a problem or build a new service in 90 days? That's the challenge that President Obama is issuing to government IT executives. Don't wait a minute, get it done on time and make it right.

The idea went into effect last summer, and Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra reports that government IT executives took it seriously and came up with a revamped web for immigration that focused on customer satisfaction within 90 days, among other things. "We didn't even know how many steps an [immigration] application had to take to get it through the process. But we needed to find a way to make it more understandable," Chopra told the National Association of State CIOs conference in Austin, Texas, last week.

Moving quickly, Chopra's team helped create a graphical solution that shows users where they are in the immigration process and allows them to select their notification of choice. "Do you want to see your status online? Or get an email, or a text message? You can do that now," he said.

The new design lets users see benchmark data by immigration office to see how their turnaround time compares with other immigration offices. "We want to ensure that the citizen was at the heart of it all going forward," Chopra said.

The 90-day challenge has had a big impact on the process. What used to be a long procurement and deliverable cycle is handled very quickly. It's all part of rethinking big IT projects, he said.

For more on the 90-day challenge:
- see this ChannelWeb article

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