Karen Evans likes to say that fiscal 2006 is the year the rubber meets the road for many of the Office of Management and Budget’s E-Government initiatives.
To that end, Evans, OMB’s administrator for e-government and IT, established some high goals for agencies after the government made progress against many of the E-Government milestones the administration set last year.
In its annual Expanding E-Government report sent to Congress to coincide with the third anniversary of the E-Government Act of 2002, OMB said agencies fully reached two of the five goals it set last year and came close on two others.
This shows real progress, said Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the Government Reform Committee and co-author of the E-Government Act, who said he will continue following these developments closely.
“I’m quite pleased with the federal government’s success in implementing E-Government initiatives,” he said. “As we continue to move forward, Congress must ensure that our government is utilizing the latest technologies to improve operational efficiencies and streamline the delivery of services.”
Specifically, all agencies met OMB’s goal of implementing “effective” enterprise architectures aimed at streamlining their business functions by the end of June 2005, and 21 of 25 agencies—84 percent—have acceptable business cases for their ongoing project expenditures, the report said.
Next year, OMB wants 90 percent of agencies to have acceptable business cases for their systems and said it “will use the appropriate management tools to ensure agencies manage or mitigate risk” associated with high-risk projects. Projects are put on the at-risk list if they don’t meet at least one of the three major requirements: adequate security, a qualified full-time project manager or defined performance measures.
Also, agencies must continue using their EAs “to eliminate redundant business functions. This elimination … will show true cost savings and not just ‘cost avoidance’.”
This goal may seem modest, but it reflects a culture change within many agencies by forcing them to alter many longstanding business practices, said Fred Thompson, vice president of management and technology at the Council for Excellence in Government of Washington.
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