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STATEMENT
OF
MARK A. FORMAN
ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE OF ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
May
8, 2003
Good morning, Mr.
Chairman and Members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me to discuss
how the Administration is working to improve Homeland Security through
improved Federal IT management, including improved coordination and elimination
of redundant IT investments, E-Government efforts, and use of enterprise
architectures (EA).
Mr. Chairman, making
organizations share information is like trying to glue together thousands
of puzzle pieces. If the pieces are put together correctly, you get a
pretty picture. If you just apply the glue without an orderly approach
to building the puzzle, you could end up with something quite messy that
doesn’t look at all like the real picture. One of the challenges
for the Department of Homeland Security is to get better results from
available information. The need is not about connecting dozens of overlapping
databases, but bringing order and structure to homeland security efforts
by eliminating redundant systems, developing information sharing solutions,
and making it all work together. As laid-out in the President’s
Management Agenda initiatives for E-Government and Information Technology,
we believe we can obtain measurably better results in mission critical
areas by simplifying and unifying organizations, processes, and information
technology.
Bringing together
twenty-two previously separate agencies and offices under one Department
requires more architecting than merely gluing together all of their IT.
As recognized by the Chairman’s invitation letter, interoperability
needed for Homeland Security must extend beyond information sharing. The
Administration uses best practices in e-business and IT management to
assist in setting priorities and defining an action plan. Last June, the
President's proposal for the Department of Homeland Security highlighted
the use of EA techniques to improve both sharing and use of information.
The President stated: “Development of a single enterprise architecture
for the department would result in elimination of the sub-optimized, duplicative,
and poorly coordinated systems that are prevalent
in government today. There would be rational prioritization of projects
necessary to fund homeland security missions based on an overall assessment
of requirements rather than a tendency to fund all good ideas beneficial
to a separate unit's individual needs even if similar systems are already
in place elsewhere.”
Indeed, the Administration
believes good EA analysis is needed to build integrated business processes
and organizations. To be an effective tool, the EA has to reflect organizational
decisions made by agency leadership and be owned and used by agency leadership
in making resource decisions. Agency decisions must reflect the key elements
of the President’s Management Agenda, optimizing performance while
trading-off human capital, IT and other resources. As identified in the
National Strategy for Homeland Security, there are two primary measures
of performance to be used in the federal homeland security IT initiatives:
(1) improving response time – the time to detect and respond to
potential threats; and (2) improving decision-making – making the
right decisions at the right time. All homeland security IT investments
must accelerate our response times and improve our decision making, and
doing so requires significant changes in long-standing organizations,
processes, information flows, and IT investments.
Mr. Chairman, as
we have discussed before, there are a number of issues that must be addressed
to get value from the Department of Homeland Security’s IT investments.
At a minimum we have identified agency culture, public trust, resources,
stakeholder resistance, and lack of both a Federal EA as well as individual
agency EAs as all potential barriers to be overcome through effective
management of IT resources.
Improving
Agency use of Information and IT
OMB provides guidance
and works with Federal agencies to ensure that the Federal government
applies best practices in IT management. Through traditional budget and
management processes, we hold all agencies accountable for meeting the
statutory and policy requirements defined below. Four of the key components
are:
1. Enterprise
Architectures.
An EA describes how
an organization performs its work using people, business processes, data,
and technology. By aligning organizations, business processes, information
flows, and technology, EA tools are used to build a blueprint for improving
efficiency and effectiveness of an organization. OMB operates the Federal
Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office, created last year,
to work with Federal agencies in developing a government-wide EA. The
FEA is a business-focused framework developed for OMB, federal agencies
and Congress to use in improving the performance of government.
The FEA framework
addresses five important areas of enterprise architecture, tying together
the business, performance, service, technology, and data layers.
Through the Business
Reference Model (BRM) we identify the Federal government’s
business operations and the agencies that perform them. This information
helps to prevent potentially redundant IT investments in the Federal government’s
business lines, ultimately resulting in cost savings and productivity
growth. Version 2.0 of the model will be released later this month for
all agencies to use in the FY 2005 budget formulation process.
The Performance Reference Model (PRM) is a framework that agencies
will use to link IT investments to mission performance measures. The model
allows OMB and agencies to identify common measurements and set baselines
and targets. OMB has released the Working Draft PRM for Federal agency review
and comment.
The Service Component Reference Model (SRM) provides the foundation
for the re-use and sharing of IT across Federal agencies, and potentially
across Federal, state and local governments.
The Technical Reference Model (TRM) outlines the technology elements
that support the service components. The TRM will be used to facilitate
both interoperability and the transition to e-government by reducing the
complexity and isolated nature of many Federal systems, encourage the sharing
of infrastructures across agencies, and reduce IT costs.
The Data and Information Reference Model (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.
In addition, OMB
and the Federal CIO Council are developing the Federal Enterprise Architecture
Management System (FEAMS). FEAMS is a web-based tool to enhance FEA analysis
and maintenance, and agencies’ capital planning and investment control
efforts. In addition to storing the FEA reference models, FEAMS will include
general information on agencies’ IT initiatives.
We are actively working
with the Department to ensure that they develop a comprehensive EA that
optimizes the existing investments inherited from the legacy agencies.
This includes identifying redundant investments, developing new solutions,
and linking together existing systems.
2. Managing
and Budgeting IT Investments
OMB IT management (OMB Circular A-130)
and budget (OMB Circular A-11)
guidance addresses information sharing at a system by system basis through
the agency budget request or business case for each IT investment. We are
working with all agencies to ensure that they appropriately leverage and
consolidate their IT investments (infrastructure, business management systems,
and mission-related IT) within and across their directorates.
In particular, the merging of twenty-two previously separate agencies has
resulted in DHS inheriting a number of redundant and overlapping IT systems
and processes. The Director of OMB, in Memoranda M-02-12
and M-02-13, issued guidance under
the Clinger-Cohen Act on consolidating and integrating IT investments across
agencies performing homeland security missions. Through the FY 2005 budget
process, OMB will work with the Department to eliminate redundant and non-integrated
operations, systems, and processes for business and mission areas. Through
consolidated business cases, the relevant systems for consolidation are
listed, plans for migration and elimination are reported, and an integrated
business process identified. Additionally, each business case must identify
specific performance measures – how are we advancing our homeland
security goals through the requested investment, what performance improvement
will we achieve? IT investments that support homeland security missions
must be appropriately integrated in order to leverage technology for mission
effectiveness while preventing redundant investments and wasted resources.
Additionally, I would
like to highlight recent guidance issued by the Director of OMB to Federal
agencies on planning for the President’s FY 2005 Budget Request.
To further strengthen IT and E-Government efforts, Federal agencies were
instructed to ensure that IT budget information is fully integrated with
each FY 2005 budget request justification, demonstrate solid business
cases for IT projects, and identify all IT investments within their budget
request. DHS will be held to this standard like any other Department.
We are working with them to strengthen the use of IT in homeland security
efforts.
3. E-Government
Initiatives.
As you know, the
Administration has been aggressively working over the last year and a
half in the development and implementation of twenty-four government-wide
Presidential E-Government initiatives. Implementation of the President’s
E-Government initiatives related to homeland security will overcome information
sharing difficulties between Federal, state, and local organizations and
first responders. In addition, many of the other Presidential E-Government
Initiatives provide solutions that must be adopted by all departments.
These initiatives include E-Authentication as well as a new initiative
on public health information.
The goal of E-Authentication
is to minimize the burden on businesses, the public and government when
obtaining services online by providing a secure infrastructure for online
transactions, eliminating the need for separate processes for the verification
of identity and electronic signatures. However, a large portion of E-Authentication
involves policy work. As the Federal government modernizes internal processes
to reduce costs for agency administration and moves to cross agency applications
that are available to all Federal employees, common solutions for authentication
are needed. The first step of which is the development of policy to implement
standardized identity credentials across the Federal government, which
all Departments will implement.
Public Health Monitoring
involves activities associated with monitoring the public health and tracking
the spread of disease. For FY 2003 and FY 2004 requests for projects valued
at $ 267 M and $ 296 M were received by OMB. Requesting agencies included
HHS and VA. Areas of potential overlap included: health information surveillance,
emergency response and addressing "early warning" and alerts,
decision support and case management functionality.
Two of the President’s initiatives, Project Safecom, and Disaster
Management, directly support and promote improving information sharing between
Federal, state, and local first responders. The goal of Project Safecom
is to provide interoperable wireless options for Federal, state and local
public safety organizations and ensure they can communicate and share information
as they respond to emergency incidents. Disaster Management provides Federal,
state, and local emergency managers online access to disaster management-related
information, planning and response tools. Both of these initiatives strongly
support “vertical” (i.e., intergovernmental) integration necessary
to meet homeland security goals.
Because these two
initiatives clearly support homeland security missions and activities
within the Department of Homeland Security, OMB placed it as the managing
partner for the initiatives. As managing partner, DHS is responsible for
ensuring the accuracy of the business cases for these initiatives, submitting
the business cases, and ensuring the management of the projects to achieve
the cost, schedule and performance goals for the implementation and operations
phases.
Additionally, as
part of the recent OMB guidance to agencies on FY 2005 budget planning,
and to ensure that E-Government initiatives are appropriately supported,
OMB will provide each agency’s funding or other resource requirements
as outlined in the FY 2004 President's Budget, for participation in the
Presidential E-Gov Projects, consistent with requirements under the E-Government
Act of 2002.
4. President’s
Management Agenda
OMB monitors progress
on all of these items on a regular basis through the President’s
Management Agenda Scorecard under the Expanding E-Government Score. Inability
to achieve the core criteria under the E-Government Scorecard will prevent
an agency from “getting to green”. As true information sharing
is dependent on a number of factors as I have discussed -- development
and implementation of an effective EA, appropriate planning and budgeting
for IT investments, and successful achievement of E-Government initiatives,
-- failure to overcome barriers will directly impact an agency’s
E-Government Score. Because the Department of Homeland Security is new,
it’s status is scored as “red.” We are actively working
with them to achieve real progress in the next several months.
Conclusion
The Administration
will continue to work collaboratively across Federal agencies, with Congress,
State and local governments, and the private sector to strengthen information
sharing in support of homeland security efforts. Achieving true homeland
security will require IT investments that both guarantee real-time information
sharing, and successfully improve response time and decision-making. To
meet these goals and assist in overcoming information sharing barriers,
we require wise IT investments that support homeland security missions,
enhance productivity, ultimately facilitating information sharing while
ensuring security and privacy. While we recognize that the Department
is currently grappling with cultural legacies of twenty-two component
agencies, we fully expect that DHS leadership will continue to build an
integrated and interoperable structure, resulting in a business driven
EA that reflects the President’s vision of eliminating “sub-optimitized,
duplicative, and poorly coordinated systems.” OMB will continue
to work with DHS leadership, including the Chief Information Officer to
ensure that their EA efforts, their integration of business process, and
consolidation and elimination of redundant IT investments remains a top
priority and is addressed in a timely manner. We will assess their efforts
on a regular basis and use the President’s Management Agenda Scorecard
to monitor their progress against detailed milestones.
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