The Office of Management and Budget launched the President’s Management Agenda in the summer of 2001, intending to leave the federal government in better shape from a program management standpoint than it found it. Clay Johnson, OMB’s deputy director for management, often repeats a story about how President Bush asked him to make federal agencies more effective and efficient in the ways they spend taxpayer money.
For Johnson and his team of managers, the agenda for the next 12 months is clear: Keep advancing the management principles of the President’s Management Agenda, which are strategic management of the workforce, competitive sourcing, improved financial performance, expanded e-government, and budget and performance integration. Johnson’s team includes Robert Shea, associate director of administration and government performance; Karen Evans, administrator of e-government and information technology; Paul Denett, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy; and Danny Werfel, acting controller.
Members of the management team sat down with Federal Computer Week News Editor Jason Miller in Johnson’s Washington office to discuss what each of them hopes to achieve in the final year of the Bush administration. This is an excerpt of that interview.
FCW: With one year left, what can be done? What are your priorities? How do you sustain momentum?
Johnson: We are not trying to do anything new.
The president has asked us to make sure what we’re working on is going to make the federal government more effective while we’re here and after we leave. Those initiatives are [outlined] in the President’s Management Agenda and a recent executive order related to performance improvements in federal programs. We must make sure we are implementing those initiatives and moving each one further down the field, but no new initiatives. We want to achieve the desired goals for 2008 and set goals for 2009, so that when the next administration comes in, people aren’t standing at parade rest, waiting for their marching orders.
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