US Reviews Tech Spending

Obama administration officials are considering overhauling 26 troubled federal technology projects valued at as much as $30 billion as part of a broader effort by White House budget officials to cut spending.

Projects on the list are either over budget, haven't worked as expected or both, say Office of Management and Budget officials. Administration officials aren't considering shutting down the programs but instead are considering ways to revise them or separate them into smaller pieces in the proposed 2012 federal budget, which will be released in February.

Among the targeted projects is a $2.8 billion Treasury Department project to update the agency's computer network and telecommunications, which has resulted in 45 data centers that can't support newer Internet technologies, according to OMB officials. AT&T Inc. is one of the main contractors on that project, according to government records.

A $2 billion Air Force logistics project that has already cost $650 million and is still years away from deployment is also on the list, as is the Federal Bureau of Investigation's troubled $557 million Sentinel case-management system, which has been halted because of poor performance. Lockheed Martin Corp. has served as the main contractor on the FBI project.

A $7.6 billion Interior Department project to consolidate technology systems is also on the list, after Obama administration officials found that despite spending $3.25 billion so far on 200 data centers and 9,000 servers, employees aren't even on the same email system.