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Office of Management and Budget
News Release

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2001-54

OMB Outlines New Federal E-Government Strategy

23 Initiatives Will Help Improve Customer Service and Efficiency

Washington, DC, October 25, 2001 -- Office of Management and Budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. outlined today a new E-government plan that will accelerate federal government improvements in effectiveness, efficiency, and customer service. The strategy, adopted by the President’s Management Council (PMC) in October, implements the "Expanding Electronic Government" reform outlined in the President’s Management Agenda.

"As a nation we’re already the leader in global information technology. With these reforms, citizens will be able to demand and expect the same level of IT quality from their government that the private sector provides its customers," said Director Daniels.

The plan, developed by the E-Government Task Force established in August by Director Daniels, will create multi-agency teams to develop and deploy 23 major E-Government initiatives. These measures will use Internet-related technologies to accelerate and streamline service delivery to citizens, reduce paperwork burdens on business, improve management and responsiveness of joint federal-state-local programs, and apply commercial best practices to improve government operating efficiency. Another initiative will focus on computer security, disaster response, and intergovernmental communications for public safety.

The 23 E-Government initiatives cut across many federal agencies and reflect partnership with state and local governments. The initiatives are designed to maximize federal government productivity gains from technology, eliminate redundant systems, and significantly improve government’s quality of service for citizens and businesses over the next 18 to 24 months.

Mark Forman, executive director of the task force, said "We had more than 70 experienced, knowledgeable, and high-level individuals from 30 agencies working to identify high payoff initiatives that can be rapidly deployed. We now have an action plan and roadmap to E-Government that the PMC has endorsed. Each initiative reflects multiple current investments, and I look forward to working with agencies in a partnership approach to reduce redundancy and improve citizens’ return on investment. I am proud of the accomplishments of this task force, which provided a strong beginning to this important effort."

The E-Government Task Force kicked off the project on August 9. By September 5th, 80 interviews were conducted with senior federal and state officials, including political appointees and career civil officials. More than 175 e-mail responses were also received, and more than 269 information technology "projects" were uncovered.

The task force also identified that the federal business architecture comprises 28 major lines of business and discovered that nearly 500 business lines are operating in the agencies, which equates to an average of 19 agencies performing each line of business. Therefore, the task force is developing a high-level business case to evaluate each initiative. As a result of simplifying business processes and unifying government operations around citizen needs, each E-Government initiative creates an order of magnitude improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of government operations. Overall, the initiatives represent an opportunity to free-up billions of dollars of federal spending, while accelerating government response times from weeks down to minutes.

The task force identified five key areas that require executive attention to enable federal E-Government success: agency participation; lack of architecture decisions; security and privacy concerns; resource availability; and resistance from key stakeholders. The PMC agreed to provide the executive leadership and management attention needed to overcome these barriers. In addition, the PMC endorsed the task force’s federal computer security and architecture recommendations.

Agencies will now begin the difficult work of finalizing business cases and implementing the recommendations through a governance structure that includes "managing partners" working in cooperation with other partner agencies, measuring progress, and coordinating with interagency councils/steering groups on a portfolio of improvements cutting across the federal government.

 

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