Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra is holding three to four meetings a week with agency CIOs to assess whether troubled technology projects should be halted, terminated or restarted.

The so-called TechStat sessions will increase in 2011, Kundra said Tuesday during a conference call with reporters to discuss the administration's proposed fiscal 2011 budget released last week.

The budget requests $50 million in IT spending for the Office of Management and Budget, $20 million of which would be for the TechStat sessions, Kundra said.

"The TechStat sessions are a big part of what we're going to do — review all these investments and take decisive action so we can terminate projects that are not benefiting the American people," he said.

Kundra said he and other officials met recently with the Environmental Protection Agency's CIO to discuss a project that's $30 million over budget and a year behind schedule. After the meeting, Kundra gave the CIO a detailed memo on how to get the project back on course, and he said the EPA agreed to try Kundra's suggestions.

"Part of the 2011 budget looks to increase the velocity and frequency of these sessions," he said.

He said he also invites CIOs and other IT professionals from other agencies to sit in on the TechStat sessions.

"We want to be able to create an environment where CIOs across the federal government feel comfortable sharing best practices," Kundra said.

Kundra's office also plans Web innovations to create a more transparent and mobile government. The administration will relaunch the IT dashboard in the next few months, providing more detail and transparency on the status of federal IT projects, Kundra said.

"You'll see from inception to completion the lifecycle of IT projects," he said.

He also plans dashboards for other government operations, including research and development, and procurement.

"We're going to make the operations of the government far more transparent than you've ever seen before," he said.