MARK
A. FORMAN
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR E-GOVERNMENT AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS,
AND THE CENSUS
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MARCH 13, 2003
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee,
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the Subcommittee to discuss
the Administration's views on e-government. To answer the question posed
in the title of this hearing, yes –we are headed in the right direction.
We welcome your interest and the continued opportunity to work with you
to strengthen IT and e-government.
E-government is increasingly becoming the principal means by which citizens
engage with their government. A September 2002 report from the Pew Foundation
found that 71 million Americans have used government web sites – up
from 40 million in March 2000. And based on a poll commissioned by the Council
for Excellence in Government, citizens overwhelmingly believe that e-government
leads to better government. The President sees e-government as part of a
larger vision for reforming government.
Electronic Government, also known as e-government, is one of the key elements
in the President's Management Agenda. The Expanding E-Government initiative
is bringing more services to the American citizen over the Internet and
is using IT to improve management throughout the Executive Branch. Federal
investments in IT, through the President’s e-government initiatives,
can free-up billions of dollars in unnecessary federal IT spending, reduce
government’s burden on citizens and businesses, and improve government
operations to accelerate government response times, often from weeks to
minutes. This Administration continues to integrate and align e-government
with the President’s other management initiatives: budget and performance
integration, strategic management of human capital, competitive sourcing,
and improved financial performance. The potential for substantial improvement
is greater if all these initiatives are pursued concurrently.
The Administration is pleased to have worked with this Committee to pass
the E-government Act of 2002, which establishes an Office of E-government
in OMB, and codifies several important activities and efforts to further
e-government. We will discuss our implementation of the Act later.
E-government and the President’s Management
Agenda
The President's vision for reforming government emphasizes that “government
needs to reform its operations—how it goes about its business and
how it treats the people it serves.” The vision is guided by three
principles:
-
Citizen-centered,
not bureaucracy-centered;
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Results-oriented;
and
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Market-based, actively promoting innovation and entrepreneurship.
For the e-government initiative, the strategic question that we face is
how to maximize results from the more than $50 billion we invest annually
in IT.
Electronic commerce and Internet technology have made daily tasks easier
and quicker; the U.S. government is now working to do the same for U.S.
citizens. E-Government will enable agencies to work together to improve
services significantly and reduce operating costs.
The e-government initiative requires agencies to use modern, secure technologies
to increase productivity, while responding faster and better to the needs
of American citizens. E-government promotes the use of e-business tools
by agencies in lessening paperwork burdens. The e-government initiative
provides tools for all levels of government – local, state, and federal
– to work together. As a result of e-government, conducting business
with the government becomes easier, more private, and secure.
When using the Internet, it should not take a citizen more than three “clicks”
of a mouse to access the government services and information needed. That
is our goal. Achieving this vision requires agencies to integrate and to
simplify their operations.
The Administration’s e-government efforts address the six chronic
problems that limit results from Federal IT spending. These chronic problems
are:
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Paving Cowpaths —
Agencies have automated existing outdated processes, instead of fixing
underlying management problems or simplifying agency procedures to take
advantage of new e-business and e-government capabilities.
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Redundant Buying — Agencies have made unnecessarily duplicative
information technology investments.
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Inadequate Program Management —
Many major IT projects have not met cost, schedule, and performance
goals.
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Poor Modernization Blueprints —
Few agencies have had plans demonstrating and documenting the linkage
between IT capabilities and the business needs of the agency.
-
Islands of Automation —
Agencies have built individual capabilities that are not interoperable
with one another. Few IT investments significantly improve mission performance.
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Poor IT Security
— Major gaps have existed in agency
and government-wide information and IT-related security.
Implementing the Strategy
The Administration’s E-government Strategy is a two pronged approach
to IT reform: modernizing within agencies around the tenets of e-business,
and consolidating and integrating IT investments across agencies around
groups of citizens. The Federal Government has made significant progress
toward becoming a transformed and more productive “E-Enterprise,”
focusing on how IT is managed at an enterprise level within and across agencies.
Since the President proposed 24 E-government initiatives in the 2003 Budget,
19 have already delivered significant capabilities and are showing results.
The E-Government initiatives consolidate dozens of redundant agency centered
efforts. The 24 projects were selected on the basis of the value they would
bring to citizens, while generating cost savings or improving effectiveness
of government. The initiatives reflect the Administration’s E-Government
Strategy, which focuses on four citizen-centered groups.
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Individuals: Building easy to find one-stop-shops for citizens -- creating
single points of easy access to high-quality government services. Citizens
should be able to find what they need quickly and easily and access
information in minutes or seconds, instead of days or hours. For example,
the GovBenefits.gov portal is expanding to provide potential beneficiaries
with instant access to information for all government benefit programs
and services through a single web site. Federal agencies use IT to enhance
delivery of government services, and to engage the public in new and
constructive ways in the development and implementation of policies
and programs.
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Businesses: The Federal government must use the Internet to reduce the
burden it places on businesses. The Administration cannot continue to
make businesses report the same data to multiple agencies because the
government fails to minimize redundant data collection and use commercial
electronic transaction protocols. A citizen centered approach will streamline
reporting requirements as well as facilitating a more efficient means
for business to do business with the government. For example, the Business
Compliance One Stop project reduces government’s burden on business
owners by making it easy to find, understand, and comply with laws and
regulations.
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Intergovernmental: The Federal government must make it easier for states
and localities to meet reporting requirements, while promoting performance,
especially for grants. State and local governments will see significant
administrative savings and will be able to improve program delivery
through collaboration tools for e-government. Enhanced and more visible
performance reports will help make government at all levels more accountable
for results and wise use of resources. Moreover, improving the way that
information is shared among levels of government will improve the nation’s
ability to provide for homeland security. Many of the intergovernmental
initiatives are designed to improve homeland security as identified
in the President’s Budget and in the National Strategy for
Homeland Security released in July. For example, one initiative
is a secure portal that will improve the disaster management process
by simplifying and unifying the interaction between Federal, state,
and local public safety personnel.
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Internal Efficiency and Effectiveness: The Federal government must modernize
internal processes to reduce costs for federal government agency administration.
Industry best practices in supply-chain management, financial management,
and knowledge management improve agency efficiency and effectiveness,
eliminates delays in processing, and improves employee satisfaction
and retention. A clear model is the E-Training initiative which is consolidating
numerous online federal training capabilities into a premier E-training
portal (GoLearn.gov), providing enhanced access to high quality training
and competency development for federal employees.
The 24 projects achieve results by simplifying and unifying redundant work
processes and IT. Agencies have since identified additional opportunities
for using e-government to work across boundaries to improve performance
and reduce costs.
Significant progress has been made on the projects in the last year, including
the launch of numerous government portals, initiative websites and consolidations.
Our recent achievements include:
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FirstGov.gov: Provides American citizens with a gateway to the federal
government. Named “One of the Top 50 Most Incredibly Useful Web
Sites” by Yahoo! Internet Life, July 2002 and redesigned
to provide government services within “three clicks.” The
new “three clicks” strategy has increased the number of
site visitors by 50 percent. Recently launched within Firstgov is Science.gov,
a gateway to science and technology and related R&D information
provided by U.S. Government agencies.
-
Recreation.gov: Provides citizens with one-stop online access to America’s
National Parks and public recreation areas. The web site includes links
to 1900 federal parks and receives more than 750,000 site visitors per
month.
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GovBenefits.gov: Offers citizens one-stop access to information and
services of almost 200 government programs representing more than $1.3
trillion in annual benefits. GovBenefits receives more than 500,000
visitors per month and is listed as one of USA Today’s “Hot
Sites.”
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GoLearn.gov: This on-line training initiative is the number one most
visited e-training site in the world, with more than 36 million hits
for information on many thousands of e-training courses, e-books, and
career development resources. GoLearn.gov has already allowed over 30,000
federal employees to receive training at a cost of pennies per course
that would not have been possible prior to the launch of this initiative.
Traditional training approaches only serve a fraction of this number
of people, often at as much as $2,500-$5,000 per class.
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Volunteer.gov: Works in support of the President’s USAFreedomCorps
initiative by allowing citizens to have access to information about
volunteering for more than 100,000 openings at national parks, veteran
hospitals, and other federal facilities.
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Integrated Acquisition: Helps federal agencies acquire acquire quality
goods and services cost-effectively by providing one-stop access to
a catalogue of interagency vendor contacts and a record of vendor past
performance.
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E-Payroll: Consolidates government payroll processing from 22 service
providers to two service partnerships. $1.2 billion will be saved over
the next 10 years by modernizing just two providers, rather than 22.
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IRS Free Filing: Over 78 million Americans can file their taxes online
for free beginning in the 2003 tax filing season. In the first 5 weeks
for the tax season, 1.3 million Americans have used this service as
of February 21st. The number of e-filed returns is up 8.1 percent from
the same time last year.
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Regulations.gov: Makes it quicker and easier for citizens and small
businesses to find and comment on hundreds of proposed rules. Regulations.gov
is estimated to save $94 million by creating a single system that makes
the rulemaking process more efficient. Since its launch on January 23rd
of this year, the site has had approximately 1.5 million hits.
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E-Clearance: E-Clearance has deployed an integrated database that will
enable significant reductions in the security clearance backlog.
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Disability.gov is a one-stop resource for Americans with disabilities,
providing them access to disability-related information and programs
available across the government. The disability.gov website was launched
in October 2002.
We are continuing to focus on improving government responsiveness and reducing
the government’s burden. Here are some of the initiatives that will
have deployments over the next few months:
- Geospatial
One Stop Portal will launch in Spring 2003, pulling together all existing
and planned federal geospatial assets into one-stop shopping for all
customers.
-
Disasterhelp.gov: Although launched with information for citizens, the
need for security limits access to first responders. At the end of April,
the initiative will launch a robust set of tools for Federal, state,
local, and tribal first responders to work together before, during,
and after a disaster.
-
Business Compliance One-Stop: One-stop Internet access to help small
businesses find the laws and regulations they must comply with to start
and/or manage a business.
-
E-Grants: The E-Grants website deploys in October, there will be a simple
one-stop online place for state and local governments, researchers,
faith and community based organizations, citizens and businesses to
easily look across 500 grant programs to see what grant may meet their
needs.
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Recruitment One-Stop: Will provide one-stop access to government job
opportunities and deliver state-of-the-art on-line recruitment services
to job seekers including intuitive job searching, on-line resume submission,
applicant data mining, and on-line feedback on status and eligibility
We have attached Table 22-2 from Chapter 22 from the Analytical Perspective
of the FY 2004 President’s Budget, which summarizes the 24 E-government
initiatives, recent accomplishments, performance metrics and coming milestones
for the Committee’s information.
Agency Success
Agency IT investments continue to make the federal government the largest
buyer of IT in the world and agencies are deriving better value from IT.
Indeed, effective use of IT will improve the government’s overall
performance. This improvement is occurring within agencies by modernizing
to support their mission and improve their infrastructure and across agencies
by simplifying and unifying activities around the needs of citizens.
Some improvements have been attained through better IT management within
agencies. Additionally, specific initiatives in the federal IT portfolio
have started to deliver real successes in citizen services and government
operations. For example:
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Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs Sharing of Information Technology:
The Department of Veterans Affairs has incorporated the Department of
Defense’s eligibility and enrollment system -- providing veterans
with seamless services as they leave the military and apply for benefits
at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Departments also are working
jointly on computerized patient medical records that will allow instant
exchange of patient information between the two health care systems
by the end of 2005. These joint efforts escalate the pace of coordination,
reducing costs while increasing efficiency and healthcare quality for
those who have served our nation.
- Performance
Based Data Management Initiative (PBDMI): At the Department of Education,
IT is being used to transform how state student academic performance
information is collected and managed. Currently states and school districts
are bogged down in complicated and redundant reporting that is not effectively
shared among Department of Education programs or education partners.
This initiative will result in a streamlined data collection process
that reduces burden on State governments and eliminates redundancy across
the department.
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I-MANAGE: The cornerstone of the Department of Energy's efforts to improve
management effectiveness, I-MANAGE will integrate disparate human resources,
financial management, procurement, facilities management, budget formulation,
financial and cost accounting systems. I-MANAGE replaces a less effective
financial management system that was behind schedule. When implemented,
I-MANAGE will provide real-time information enabling managers to monitor
program performance.
Use of the E-Government Scorecard
We have been tracking each agency’s efforts on modernizing their Department’s
collaborating in the cross-agency e-government initiatives. Each quarter,
the e-government score for the President’s Management Agenda Scorecard
is adjusted for an agency’s progress and status. OMB has been working
with Department and agency e-government leaders, as well as their CIOs,
to provide for success.
Agencies that improved their status score from “red” to “yellow”
since the baseline evaluations of September 2001: The Department of Education,
the Department of Energy, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The National
Science Foundation upgraded their status from "yellow" to "green"
and continues to serve as a model for how small agencies can successfully
implement e-government.
Agencies that received “green” for their progress rating in
the first quarter of 2003: The Department of Education, the Department of
Housing and Urban Development, Department of Interior, Department of Energy,
Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Department of Agriculture,
Department of Labor, Department of Transportation, Department of Veterans
Affairs, the Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, National Science Foundation, Office of Personnel Management,
Social Security Administration, the Small Business Administration and the
Smithsonian.
Specific Actions to Address Chronic Problems
Agencies must continue to address these longstanding challenges in order
to deliver measurable improvements in the key areas of program performance.
Over the past year, the Administration made significant progress in addressing
the six chronic problems that were identified in the 2003 Budget as limiting
IT effectiveness.
1. Automation of existing outdated processes,
instead of fixing underlying management problems or simplifying agency
procedures to take advantage of new E-Business and E-Government capabilities.
For years IT Investments in the federal government focused on agency hardware
and software needs, without addressing underlying management issues in the
overall design and scope of the project. Consequently, government agencies
traditionally used IT to automate existing processes rather than create
more efficient and effective solutions now possible because of IT. This
approach, commonly referred to as paving the cowpath, has been documented
as a cause of failure in major IT investments. Systems are often evaluated
by the percentage of time they are working rather than the results delivered
to the programs and citizen they support.
OMB’s guidance for the 2004 IT budget process required that agencies
take a comprehensive reform approach in identifying people, processes, and
technology required to deliver significantly better results. As a result,
771 projects, representing approximately $21 billion, are on the “At
Risk List” for failing to address people and process transformation
needed to ensure success, or do not adequately address IT security. These
projects will be monitored throughout FY 2003; OMB will allow investments
on the list to move forward only after agencies present successful business
cases.
2. Duplicative IT investments
OMB policy calls for agencies to make maximum use of shared IT solutions
and to stop redundant IT purchases. Best practices in private industry identify
several opportunities for savings within an IT portfolio of investments.
Three consolidation practices in the private sector also are applicable
to the federal government:
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Consolidation of IT around the customer.
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Consolidation of IT within a line of business or function.
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Consolidation of IT infrastructure.
To identify potential opportunities in these areas, OMB analyzed the agency
IT investment portfolios and provided feedback and suggestions to the agencies.
This consolidation analysis not only identified savings for the agencies,
but also served to strengthen the governance processes for IT management
by identifying and continually pursuing opportunities in this area. For
example, use of enterprise licenses for software can generate hundreds of
millions of dollars in reduced costs.
Over the past year, OMB:
- Determined
that due to redundant infrastructure investments, the federal government
was purchasing excess infrastructure capacity, such as telecommunications,
office automation, and mainframe computers.
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Identified redundant IT investments made for the same purpose and supporting
the same lines of business across multiple agencies.
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Developed portfolios and deployed initial versions of IT investments
consolidated around citizen needs. The four portfolios comprise cross-agency
E-Government initiatives for citizens, businesses, other levels of government,
and the federal government’s internal efficiency and effectiveness.
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Rejected agency requests for duplicative IT investments across the federal
government, and rather directed agencies to collaborate together to
create one-stop points of service.
In key examples of cross agency consolidations, payroll operations will
be standardized and consolidated from approximately 22 separate providers
to a few federal payroll providers by September 2004. The current systems
employ a variety of paper and electronic processing; records are not easily
shared between agencies as federal employees change jobs in the federal
system; and records are manually retired upon employees' retirement and
resignation. Numerous agencies had targeted their payroll operations for
costly modernization efforts. Millions of dollars will be saved through
shared resources and processes and by modernizing on a cross-agency, government-wide
basis rather than agency-by-agency.
The Administration continues work to ensure that IT investments reflect
consolidation around citizen groups and along lines of business; reduce
duplicative collection of data from citizens, businesses, and state and
local government; purchase enterprise licensees for the federal government
where appropriate; and reduce surplus infrastructure capacity.
3. Few IT investments have significantly improved
mission performance.
IT investment results have been limited by significant redundancy in federal
business operations. As I will discuss later in my testimony, OMB issued
guidance requiring that agency IT investments synchronize with the Federal
Enterprise Architecture, which is a tool that enables the government to
identify opportunities that leverage technology and alleviate redundancy.
This effort identified opportunities to simplify processes and unify IT
investments across the federal government.
As a result, OMB now can ensure that IT resources are being allocated optimally
across common functions that the government performs. Functions that are
performed by multiple agencies are now clearly delineated, and the opportunities
for cross-agency collaboration to improve performance are readily apparent.
OMB is accomplishing this through the Business Reference Model (BRM), which
is the foundational layer of the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA).
Over the past year, OMB used the BRM to:
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Assist agencies in identifying opportunities for collaborative investments,
joint infrastructure projects, and greater use of enterprise licensing
across the government -- all of which can help agencies to focus on
their mission and avoid unnecessary redundant spending.
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Deny funding to redundant investments, while directing agencies to reuse
existing IT or join with other agencies making overlapping investments
in the appropriate line of business.
4. Few agencies have plans demonstrating and documenting
the linkage between IT capabilities and business needs.
The most important element of enterprise architecture is the identification
of how IT can be leveraged best to improve agency performance of core missions.
Many agency Enterprise Architectures lack focus on business results. As
a result, many agencies, bureaus and operating divisions cannot share information
or systems; this shortfall increases operating costs as well as burden on
citizens and businesses. Additionally, agencies cannot easily analyze IT
security risks and determine investment needs; and agencies make redundant
investments in IT because programs cannot predict whether IT requirements
will be met without buying their own version of a system. These issues can
be addressed through better use of enterprise architectures that comprise
a “modernization blueprint”.
Although some improvements have been made in recent years, agencies still
often base IT investments on business cases that fail to link IT investments
to performance improvement. Progress in this area includes:
- Agencies
are progressing towards fully implementing their own Enterprise Architecture
frameworks, meeting criteria set by OMB that are consistent with effective
practices identified by the General Accounting Office; these criteria
are used to assess agencies on their EA performance as part of their
E-Government Score. Some agencies, such as Department of Energy and
Environmental Protection Agency, are basing IT investments on core modernization
initiatives identified using their Enterprise Architecture activities.
These agencies use the Enterprise Architecture process as an opportunity
to identify performance gaps and ways that technology can be used to
help close those gaps and better serve the citizen.
-
OMB has begun to coordinate EA efforts, groups, working groups, communities
of practices, etc., to ensure that the overall strategy and any guidance
for EA is driven by the FEA. In their place will be a structured and
well-planned modernization effort guided by the work of the FEA.
- For
the 2004 business cases, OMB added specific questions to ensure that
agencies began to tie IT investments to the performance goals and measures
of the programs they support.
5. Many major IT projects do not meet cost, schedule,
and performance goals.
Under the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act (FASA) and the Clinger Cohen
Act, agencies must report and track progress against cost, schedule and
performance goals for IT. Under OMB Circular A-11, agencies are expected
to achieve on average 90 percent of the cost and schedule goals without
reducing the performance capabilities. The greatest problem for the agencies
is identifying how a project is performing against planned costs, schedule,
and mission improvement goals. Until agencies begin to establish and document
baselines, the Administration’s ability to assess whether agencies
are meeting such goals will be limited.
A comparison of agency investment requests for 2003, versus what is reported
as actual costs, provides specific demonstration that too many IT projects
have cost and schedule overruns. A sample comparison of projects’
identified cost growth ranging from 10 percent to 225 percent! Not surprising,
these same projects failed to successfully make the business case for the
2004 budget and have either been rejected or placed on the “At Risk
List”.
There are several strategies to improve the government’s capacity
to manage its IT portfolio. In response to the President’s Management
Agenda, and emerging needs such as homeland security, the federal IT workforce
needs to become flexible to meet these new cross-agency needs. To address
this issue, over the past year, OMB:
-
Required that all major acquisitions implement an Earned Value Management
System (EVMS), based on the industry developed ANSI/EIA Standard 748.
An EVMS supports program management by effectively integrating the work
scope of a program with the schedule and cost elements for optimum program
planning and control. The system requires thorough planning, combined
with the establishment and disciplined maintenance of a baseline for
performance measurement.
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Directed that by the end of 2004 all major acquisition programs should
have an EVMS in place that will enable agencies to report accurate information
on the achievement of the baseline cost, schedule and performance goals
during 2005.
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Indicated that for the 2005 budget submissions, OMB will compare what
was reported in the 2004 business cases against what agencies report
in 2005 to determine whether or not the investments are meeting cost,
schedule and performance goals.
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Directed agencies to have a program management plan and a qualified
project manager for projects to be approved for spending in 2004 and
thereafter.
6. Major gaps exist in agency and government-wide
computer-related security.
The Government Information Security Reform Act (GISRA) requires federal
agencies and Inspector General (IGs) to conduct annual IT security reviews
of programs and systems and report the results of those reviews to OMB and
the Congress. GISRA was recently revised under the E-Government Act of 2002
and renamed the Federal Information Security Management Act.
Under the first year of GISRA reporting in 2001, the Administration was
able to establish a baseline of agencies' IT security performance. While
some agencies have demonstrated clear progress over the last year, significant
challenges remain for other agencies.
To ensure that IT security weaknesses are appropriately addressed, OMB requires
agencies to develop, implement, and maintain plans of action and milestones
for every program and system where an IT security weakness was found. These
plans are tied directly to the budget request for a system. Agency progress
in executing their plans is used in determining the quarterly E-Government
score for the President’s Management Agenda Scorecard. OMB is also
reinforcing longstanding policy that agencies address serious IT security
weaknesses in their legacy systems prior to proceeding with new IT investments.
For the first time, the federal government’s IT security program now
has a basic set of IT security performance measures, a comprehensive and
uniform process for collecting data against those measures, and a set of
tasks and milestones that enable tracking of federal IT security progress.
Additionally, agency reports reveal that further progress has been made
against the six common government-wide IT security weaknesses identified
in last year’s budget:
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Increasing agency senior management attention to IT security. In addition
to conditionally approving or disapproving agency IT security programs,
OMB used the President’s Management Agenda Scorecard to focus
on serious IT security weaknesses. Through the scorecard, OMB and senior
agency officials monitor agency progress on a quarterly basis.
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Development of IT security performance measures. For the 2002 reporting
instructions OMB developed high-level management performance measures
to assist agencies in evaluating their IT security status and the performance
of officials charged with implementing specific IT security requirements.
These measures are mandatory and help to ensure that accountability
follows authority.
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Improving security education and awareness. Through GoLearn.gov IT security
courses were available to all federal agencies in late 2002. Initial
courses are targeted to CIOs and program managers, with additional courses
to be added for IT security managers, and the general workforce.
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Increasing integration of security into capital planning and investment
control. OMB continues to aggressively address this issue through the
budget process, to ensure that adequate security is incorporated directly
into and funded over the life cycle of all systems and programs before
funding is approved. Through this process agencies can demonstrate explicitly
how much they are spending on security and associate that spending with
a given level of performance.
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Working toward ensuring that contractor services are adequately secure.
This issue is currently under review by the Federal Acquisition Regulatory
Council to develop, for government-wide use a clause to ensure security
is addressed as appropriate in contracts.
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Improving process of detecting, reporting, and sharing information on
vulnerabilities. It is critical that agencies and their components report
all incidents in a timely manner and it is also essential that agencies
actively install corrective patches for known vulnerabilities.
As agencies conduct more reviews, the number of security weaknesses they
will find is likely to increase. Based on agency and IG IT security reports,
agencies' plans of action and milestones, and IT budget materials, both
progress and weaknesses have been identified. OMB set targeted milestones
for improvement for some of the critical IT security weaknesses. These targets
include:
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More agencies must establish and maintain an agency-wide process for
developing and implementing program and system level plans. Plans of
action and milestones must serve as an agency’s authoritative
management tool, to ensure that program and system level IT security
weaknesses, once identified, are tracked and corrected. By the end of
2003, all agencies shall have an adequate process in place.
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Many agencies find themselves faced with the same security weaknesses
year after year. They lack system level security plans and certifications.
Through the budget process, OMB will continue to assist agencies in
prioritizing and reallocating funds to address these problems. By the
end of 2003, 80 percent of federal IT systems shall be certified and
accredited.
- While
agencies have made improvements in integrating security into new IT
investments, significant problems remain in ensuring security of new
and in particular, legacy systems. By the end of 2003, 80 percent of
the federal government’s 2004 major IT investments shall appropriately
integrate security into the lifecycle of the investment.
Federal Enterprise Architecture
The need for a Federal government enterprise architecture was one of the
most significant findings to emerge from the e-government strategy efforts.
An enterprise architecture (EA) describes how an organization performs its
work using people, business processes, data, and technology. EAs provide
modernization blueprints to reform agency operations by aligning business,
information, and technology systems to improve efficiency and effectiveness
of an organization.
OMB is leading the development of a Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA)
with the support of the CIO Council. The FEA is a business-focused framework
that provides the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Federal agencies
with a mechanism to monitor, analyze, and control Federal investments in
information technology (IT). The FEA will govern and guide IT investment
decisions within agencies, and facilitate the identification of opportunities
to collaborate on, consolidate, and integrate current and planned initiatives.
The FEA will facilitate horizontal (cross Federal) and vertical (Federal,
State, and Local governments) collaboration and communication. The FEA framework
consists of a set of five interrelated reference models:
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Business Reference Model (BRM): The BRM describes the Federal Government’s
operations independent of the agencies that perform them, and serves
as the foundation for the FEA. Version 1.0 of the model was released
to agencies in July 2002 supported the FY 2004 budget formulation process.
For example, the BRM was used for identifying potentially redundant
IT investments in the Federal government’s business lines, which
will ultimately result in significant cost savings. These savings will
be available to move into other, citizen-centered investments to further
improve Government performance and service to citizens. Version 2.0
of the model is undergoing Agency review and comment.
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Performance Reference Model (PRM): The PRM is a standardized measurement
framework to characterize performance in a common manner. The PRM is
designed to provide a clear “line of sight” from inputs
to outcomes, and identify improvement opportunities across organizational
boundaries. The model will allow OMB and agencies to identify common
measurements and set baselines and targets. Proposed IT investments
can then be considered based on their projected contribution to the
processes and activities key to achieving customer and business results.
OMB plans to release the first version of the PRM for agency review
and comment soon.
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Service Component Reference Model (SRM): The SRM provides the foundation
for the re-use of applications, components, functions and business services
across Federal agencies, and potentially across Federal, State and Local
Governments. The first version of the model was released for agency
review and comment in January.
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Technical Reference Model (TRM): The TRM outlines the technical elements
that support the adoption of service components. Use of the model will
encourage and facilitate both system interoperability and the transition
to e-government. This will help to reduce the complexity and isolated
nature of many Federal systems, encourage the sharing of infrastructures
across agencies, and reduce IT costs. The first version of the model
was released for agency review and comment in January.
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Data and Information Reference Model (DRM): The DRM will provide a consistent
framework to characterize and describe the data that supports Federal
business lines. This will promote interoperability, as well as the horizontal
and vertical sharing of information. OMB is working collaboratively
with a small group of interested Federal agencies to define and validate
the model, and a draft will be released soon for agency review and comment
soon.
Funding
IT and E-Government
The
President's Budget is clear about our plans to use capital planning to
improve performance, achieve outcomes from investments that match agency
strategic priorities, and provide real benefits to the public. As major
corporations have adapted to the digital economy, business cases, enterprise
architectures, and IT capital planning have become recognized as highly
effective practices. In constructing the President’s 2004 IT Budget,
OMB employed a cross agency approach in the Federal IT capital planning
process for leveraging existing IT investments and cross agency partnering.
This Committee has strongly supported effective IT management practices,
and OMB pledges the Administration’s full support to employing these
practices throughout the government.
Many
have expressed specific concerns about the funding required to meet the
goals and changes of e-government. The Administration has sufficient funding
for cross agency e-government projects if we simply stop funding what
is redundant or not working. The FY 2003 Federal IT Budget portfolio totals
approximately $58.2 billion; in FY 2004, we estimate that almost $59 billion
will be spent on IT.
As
mentioned above, this year we identified opportunities for cross-agency
projects and have worked to leverage investments from a number of partnering
agencies for specific projects. For FY 2004, we developed a governance
process for line of business consolidation, identified through design
of the Federal business architecture. OMB gave priority to agencies that
have worked collectively to present and support activities in an integrated
fashion and used agency budget submissions to identify cross-agency investments.
Agency activities should be aligned with those of other agencies where
such cooperation can better serve citizens, businesses, governments, and
internal Federal operations.
In
some cases, agency cultures and government organizational structures make
it difficult to finance and manage cross-agency projects. To help overcome
this barrier, the President included in his FY 2004 Budget, a proposal
for a $45 million E-Government Fund for consolidations and innovative
interagency e-government projects. The E-Government Act of codifies the
E-government Fund, which will allow for the financing of cross-agency
initiatives to improve service to the citizen and reduce operating costs.
The Fund leverages cross-agency work in e government that serves citizens
and businesses, and could drastically improve citizens' ability to access
federal services and federal information online. The Fund provides for
collaborative e government activities, seed monies for new and innovative
projects and consolidating redundant information technology investments.
The $5 million appropriated in FY 2002 was invested in tools to integrate
agency investments. These tools were new and not redundant with other
existing agency expenditures and were integrated into such as GovBenefits,
Regulations.gov, E-Authentication and GoLearn. Congress provided $5 million
of the $45 million requested for the E-Gov fund in FY 2003 and we will
continue to leverage these funds to strengthen E-Gov initiatives.
Our
intent for FY 2004 is to fund similar integrations and achieve consolidation
of redundant IT investments, under a fund that leverages other investments
in a way that is not feasible through other funding sources. Indeed, as
we are successful in using the e-government fund to integrate redundant
systems, we can free up those same agency resources to be spent on more
productive ways to achieve the missions that appropriated dollars are
intended to serve. Thus it remains a key priority for the success of the
E-Government agenda to fully fund the President’s $45 million request
for FY 2004. We look forward to working with this Committee and the Congress
in ensuring that this funding is provided.
Implementation
of the E-government Act of 2002
The
Administration is pleased that Congress passed the E-government Act of
2002. This Act, signed by the President on December 17, 2002, codifies
a cross agency, citizen-centered approach to e-government and authorizes
new initiatives across the government. The goals of the E-government Act
are similar to those of the President’s Management Agenda –
efficient government operations and effective decision making.
The
activities and initiatives of the Act align with several of the initiatives
to further e-government, along with authorizing activities proposed in
the President’s Budget. These provisions include the sections authorizing
our work on the government’s web portal, FirstGov.gov; the development
of a framework to provide for interoperability in using digital signatures
for agency programs; authorization for electronic access to agency regulatory
dockets; the promotion of open geospatial information standards; strengthening
of privacy measures; and access for persons with disabilities.
In
implementing the E-government Act, OMB will oversee work to manage cross
agency transformation of business processes through e-government in ways
that utilize performance measures. OMB will integrate the requirements
and provisions of the Act into the President’s Management Agenda
and the Expanding E-government initiatives. OMB will provide for strong
privacy and security measures, as well as setting strategic direction
for information policy in general.
Conclusion
The
Administration has made major advances in e-government over the last two
years. The passage of the E-government Act of 2002 has strengthened the
mandate for governmentwide IT reform and e-government. The Act’s
cross-agency approach to e-government mirrors our intent to improve the
delivery of services and access to information for the American people.
Mr. Chairman, we look forward to working with you, and your legislative
colleagues, to achieve these important goals.
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