Lawmakers, frustrated by the Office of Management and Budget’s practice of putting federal projects on various watch lists without explaining why, have decided to do something about it.

In the fiscal 2008 Omnibus Appropriations bill President Bush signed into law Dec. 26, Congress included a governmentwide provision that requires OMB to publish in its annual budget request the specific reasons why a project is on its High-Risk and Management watch lists.

“The information will help [the Government Accountability Office] and Congress to spot trends, track progress and recommend corrective action,” lawmakers wrote in the legislation.

The new requirement follows two years of debate between OMB and lawmakers about the use and effectiveness of those lists.

That is one of several information technology and procurement-related provisions in the $515.7 billion spending bill. The following are some of the policy and management changes that agencies will face in 2008.

Governmentwide provisions

Congress told OMB to set up a pilot program to track the cost and size of service contracts in at least three Cabinet-level departments.

It wants OMB to focus on contracts with excessive costs or inferior quality.

In addition, the spending bill allocates $3 million to the E-Government fund, the same amount Congress provided in each of the past two years.

Agencies also must submit a report to the House and Senate appropriations committees and receive approval before spending money on any new or ongoing e-government projects. Those reports must account for the amount of money to be used, the activities for which the money will be spent and the relevance of the project to the agency.

Health and Human Services Department
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT will continue to develop and advance an interoperable national health IT infrastructure with $42.4 million and another $18.9 million for developing a health IT network.

Homeland Security Department
The chief information officer’s office received $214 million for the development and acquisition of IT equipment, software, services and related activities. Of that, $36.8 million will be available for DHS’ data center development and $35.5 million for further construction of a National Center for Critical Information Processing and Storage.