Transit IT: Improved Project Planning and Delivery Needed to Support Expanding Service

Transit’s information technology (IT) projects are essential for improving and expanding services. Transit must make several improvements to ensure that IT projects are completed as promised. First, it lacks a sufficient process to use lessons learned to inform future projects and avoid repeating mistakes. Second, while generally completing projects three years later than estimated, it lacks a process to determine why projects are late and to use this information to inform future estimates. Third, it does not baseline project budgets, which is necessary to fully evaluate project performance and control costs. Finally, Transit has insufficient portfolio planning and management of its IT projects to ensure that funded projects address strategic priorities.

We make 12 recommendations that support Transit’s IT project and portfolio management. We recommend that Transit develop a lessons learned process to share information across projects and inform future planning. We also recommend that Transit improve its collection of schedule information and track project spending against a baseline budget to support current projects and enhance lessons learned data. Finally, we recommend that Transit build on the Strategic Technology Roadmap for Transit (STRT) work to better define and document its IT portfolio development process and the relationships and dependencies of projects within the portfolio.

Metro Transit’s IT project portfolio constitutes the largest portion of King County’s overall IT investment budget for an individual department. Transit has spent over $86 million on IT projects since 2001, and it is planning to spend an additional $114 million by 2022. Transit’s IT environment is complex, supporting operations of about 1,500 coaches with scheduling, fare collection, communications, and route coordination, along with regional contract services and partnerships like ORCA. Accordingly, Transit’s IT projects are often interrelated and dependent on one another and external factors for success. This audit reviewed Transit’s recent history of IT project development and implementation to identify weaknesses in project management and help support Transit’s future IT work.