Each year the federal government spends billions of dollars oninformation technology (IT) investments. Given the importance ofoversight, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) established a public Web site, referred to as the IT Dashboard, that provides detailed information on about 800 federal IT investments, including assessments of actual performance against cost and schedule targets (referred to as ratings). This report: (1) determined OMB's efforts to improve the Dashboard and how it is using data from the Dashboard; and (2) examined the accuracy of the Dashboard's cost and scheduleperformance ratings. Includes recommendations. Charts and tables. This is a print on demand report.

FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY: Information on Subsectors and Regulatory Oversight

In early 2001, U.S. stock & option markets began quoting prices in decimal increments rather than fractions of a dollar. At the same time, the minimum price increment, or tick size, was reduced to a penny on the stock markets & to 10¢ & 5¢ on the option markets. Although many believe that decimal pricing has benefited small individual (retail) investors, concerns have been raised that the smaller tick sizes have made trading more challenging & costly for large institutional investors, including mutual funds & pension plans. The financial livelihood of market intermediaries may also have been negatively affected by the lower ticks. This report assesses the effect of decimal pricing on retail & institutional investors & on market intermediaries. Charts.

Daniel Solove presents a startling revelation of how digital dossiers are created, usually without the knowledge of the subject, & argues that we must rethink our understanding of what privacy is & what it means in the digital age before addressing the need to reform the laws that regulate it.

All U.S. agencies with counterterrorism programs that collect or "mine" personal data-such as phone records or Web sites visited-should be required to evaluate the programs' effectiveness, lawfulness, and impacts on privacy. A framework is offered that agencies can use to evaluate such information-based programs, both classified and unclassified. The book urges Congress to re-examine existing privacy law to assess how privacy can be protected in current and future programs and recommends that any individuals harmed by violations of privacy be given a meaningful form of redress. Two specific technologies are examined: data mining and behavioral surveillance. Regarding data mining, the book concludes that although these methods have been useful in the private sector for spotting consumer fraud, they are less helpful for counterterrorism because so little is known about what patterns indicate terrorist activity. Regarding behavioral surveillance in a counterterrorist context, the book concludes that although research and development on certain aspects of this topic are warranted, there is no scientific consensus on whether these techniques are ready for operational use at all in counterterrorism.