Back in 2009, we noted that Vivek Kundra (shown), the first CIO for the United States, boded well for open source, and would be likely to create and adopt open source applications and platforms for use in the U.S. government. Now, Kundra has announced in a blog post that some simple open source tools have helped him shave $3 billion in federal costs, and the same open source tools are being released to the public, where they could be useful in many contexts, and the public may help improve them for government use.
The two open source tools are called IT Dashboard and TechStat Toolkit, and Kundra writes:
“We launched the IT Dashboard and the TechStat Accountability Sessions to improve IT transparency and accountability across the Federal Government. The Dashboard has helped us shine a light on IT projects, providing performance data to fuel TechStat reviews, which have led to over $3 billion in cost reductions. Today we are releasing the software code of the IT Dashboard and the TechStat toolkit to the public for two reasons. First, to take the platform to the next level, we want to tap into the collective talents and ingenuity of the American people, to enhance functionality, improve the code and address existing challenges such as those identified by David Powner and his team at GAO. Second, CIOs from across the country and around the world such as Maarten Hillenaar of the Netherlands, Kyle Schafer in West Virginia and Jason DeHaan of the City of Chicago are all interested in implementing these platforms in their respective organizations.”
