All in Accountability

Managing Data-Intensive Programs and Projects: Selected Articles

I’ve created this special compendium of posts that are relevant to planning and managing data related programs and projects. There are four groups:

Perspectives on the NSA and PRISM: What Dyson Missed

In NSA: The Decision Problem George Dyson lays out a credible historical view on why he thinks what Snowden revealed about the NSA and PRISM was inevitable. While it’s certainly a pleasure to read a discussion of these issues that is so thoughtful, I think he misses one major theme that helps us understand our current predicament over what to do about Snowden.

How Our Increasing Digital Connectedness Improves Government Program Evaluation

There will always be a need to conduct formal evaluations of how well government programs perform. Such evaluations must take into account the complexity of programs and the need to distinguish among short term and long term impacts and the intervening conditions that also impact program effectiveness.

Better Org Charts Will Improve Government Agency Transparency and Accountability

Making sure that a meaningful org chart is available, precisely because it is a public statement about responsibility, might just be one of the simplest and most direct methods we have for promoting government program transparency and accountability.

Audit of the VA's Project Management Accountability System (PMAS) Implementation

Here’s some light reading: the US Dept. of Veterans Affairs’ Office of the Inspector General’s “Audit of the Project Management Accountability System Implementation.” Known as “PMAS,” the system was put in place in 2009 to provide better oversight of the VA’s troubled IT development projects. This was done in light of a history of cost overruns and failed IT projects at the VA.