Another day, another dashboard. One of the Obama administration’s hallmarks has been its fondness for such online tracking tools and a new one debuted this week to follow the status of major highway, housing and other “high priority infrastructure projects.” The site allows visitors to see where such projects stand in regard to federal permitting and environmental reviews. It follows a call from Obama this summer for agencies to handle those reviews more efficiently in the interest of putting people back to work.
The site currently list 14 projects, ranging from a New York bridge replacement to the removal of barriers that keep the endangered Southern California steelhead trout from reaching upstream spawning grounds. Agency contacts are listed by name; the new dashboard will allow the public to learn “exactly where a project is in the review process, and who to contact if it is delayed,” Jeffrey Zients, deputy director at the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in an official blog post.
