CIO — The U.S. Government has a sordid history of IT project failures. There's the FBI's virtual case file system, which the agency scrapped in 2005 after sinking $170 million into it; the $8 billion systems modernization the IRS launched nearly 10 years ago; and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' $190 million automation effort, to name just a few standouts.

Naturally, the government's solution to its IT project management problems has been legislation. The Information Technology Management Reform Act of 1996, also known as the Clinger-Cohen Act, requires federal agencies to hire strategic CIOs who can implement best practices for managing IT from the corporate world in the public sector. Agency heads are required under Section 11317 of Title 40 of the U.S. Code to identify in their IT management plans any major IT project that "has significantly deviated from the cost, performance or schedule goals established" for that project.

Now there's new legislation making its way through Congress aimed at improving the success rates of federal IT projects. If passed, the Information Technology Investment Oversight Enhancement and Waste Prevention Act of 2008 would provide more accountability for federal IT project failures. In short, it would require agency heads and their CIOs to report to the appropriate congressional committee and to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on their agency's most mission-critical IT projects that don't meet original performance requirements or exceed original cost and schedule estimates by 20 percent or more.

In the event of a cost or schedule overrun of 40 percent or more, the Information Technology Investment Oversight Enhancement and Waste Prevention Act specifies remedial actions agencies need to take to get projects back on track, including identifying three cost-effective alternatives to the ailing project. The proposed bill would also require the Office of Management and Budget's e-government administrator to put together a special team of certified project and program managers from the public and private sectors to help agencies avoid cost and schedule overruns.

The question is, will this legislation finally do the trick, or is it just a way for the IT industry to get more of the government's business in consulting contracts and software licenses?

CIO.com's Meridith Levinson spoke to Mitch Bishop, CMO of visualization software provider iRise, which is a proponent of the legislation, about the IT Waste Prevention Act and iRise's interest in it. Bishop isn't even convinced the bill, which he says is likely to be passed in 2009, will be sufficient to prevent federal IT projects from careening out of control.

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