"We want to democratise data, put it in the public square. The default setting for [IT project data] should be that its open, so people can slice and dice it."

So said Vivek Kundra, CIO to the US government, in a recent speech.

But dare you go there? Over the summer of 2009, Kundra - appointed by Barack Obama as the first-ever CIO to the US government back in March - rolled out an online dashboard that candidly exposes the current spending and schedule metrics of the 800 major projects that make up the bulk of the federal governments $76 billion annual IT spend.

The IT Dashboard uses interactive graphs and classic red/amber/green signals to provide a drill-down into project performance, identifying the agencies, departments and the CIOs responsible for each projects ongoing success or failure. At least one agency - the Department of Veterans Affairs - has already been goaded into action, announcing it has halted 45 wayward projects, budgeted at $200 million.

The question now is whether IT executives elsewhere have the nerve to mimic that level of transparency.