Forty-five troubled Veterans Affairs Department projects have been suspended as a result of the Office of Management and the Budget’s IT Dashboard. The newly launched Web site collects data on technology contracts as reported by agencies and provides it to the public along with visualizations, such as red bars indicating late or over-cost products, to aid officials and citizens in spotting wasteful spending and contract abuse.

Some projects’ ratings were so bad that as VA administrators were preparing the metrics for the OMB, they spotted the projects and suspended them before they ever appeared as red flags on the IT Dashboard site. One project was 17 months behind schedule.

Government watchdogs were pleased that the IT Dashboard project has already led to real instances of accountability, though the fact that the problematic VA contracts were spotted only when statistics were required by another agency suggested a lack of contract oversight at some agencies.

But the IT Dashboard shows that many more contracts with abysmal ratings are still in place.

Obama administration Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra disclosed the project suspensions to Nextgov yesterday.