For nearly three years, the Administration, as part of President George W. Bush's goal of expanding electronic government, has been working on ways to improve how the government provides services internally and to citizens, businesses, and state and local governments.

At this stage we are focusing on three goals for the President's 24 E-Gov Initiatives. First, support all initiatives in fulfilling their goals and objectives. Second, institutionalize and integrate these transformational initiatives into their respective government agencies operations. Third, work to increase the utilization of the services we are already providing. Additionally, we are now directing more attention to the recently established Lines of Business effort to identify ways agencies can save money through the sharing of common solutions.

Recent results in the Expanding Electronic Government initiative:

Lines of Business: The human resources management, financial management, and grants management lines of business task forces are currently analyzing information received from private and commercial industry which solicited suggestions, ideas, and best practices for common solutions for back office operations. The task forces remaining activities include development of business cases, dissemination to the agency partners, and final submission to OMB for the FY06 budget. The solutions are expected to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the federal government while providing cost savings to the taxpayer.

Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA): Following the release of the OMB Enterprise Architecture Assessment Framework in April, agencies used the framework to complete EA self-assessments. They will receive additional feedback from OMB on their EA activities and architecture data in the next quarter. The draft Data Reference Model is now under final review within OMB and is expected to be distributed to agencies for comment during the next quarter. The Federal CIO Council (CIOC) completed and will soon distribute to agencies for comment a security profile to be embedded within the FEA reference framework. The CIOC has also completed the Service Component-Based Architectures White Paper to inform agency thinking on the development and use of EA in a manner consistent with service-component sharing and reuse. In preparation for the FY06 budget cycle, the FEA PMO released a summary of changes to the reference models and provided additional instructions to assist in the development of agency business cases.

President's E-Government Initiatives:

Recreation One-Stop: Provides citizens with easy access to roughly 3,000 federal parks and other recreation sites, including about 2,000 campgrounds, representing about 150,000 campsites, managed by 10 Federal organizations and 4 states. Using data provided by the Geospatial One-Stop initiative, citizens can search by recreation activity, location, or even by interactive map to find recreation sites within a certain distance of where they are planning to visit. The initiative is current working to establish a consolidated government-wide recreation reservation system.
http://www.recreation.gov
Managing Agency: DOI

Business Gateway: Business Gateway recently announced the launch of Business.gov, a web site that will serve as the business gateway for U.S. businesses to connect with federal agencies. Business.gov is a powerful web site that will provide one-stop, on-line federal government information and services that businesses need and can access in one easy-to-find location. Business.gov allows businesses to connect quickly and efficiently to information on business development, financial assistance, taxes, laws and regulations, international trade, workplace issues, buying and selling, and federal forms. The site currently has more than 2,000 forms for businesses to fill out on-line or on paper, print, and send to federal agencies.
http://www.business.gov
Managing Agency: SBA

Consolidated Health Informatics: HHS, DOD, and VA are working with other federal agencies to identify appropriate, existing data standards and to endorse them for use across the federal health care sector. The CHI initiative recently announced the adoption of 15 new standards building on the existing set of 5 standards adopted in March, 2003. The CHI standards will help improve quality of care by making it easier to coordinate care and exchange needed information across federal agencies and will serve as a model for the private sector.
Managing Agency: HHS

Grants.gov: Grants.gov officially launched their web site in October of 2003 which provides information in a standardized format across agencies and includes a "Find Grant Opportunities" feature to help applicants find potential funding opportunities and an "Apply for Grants" feature that greatly simplifies the application process. Since the launch 157 grant programs have been made available for electronic application through Grants.gov and 825 grant applications have been received electronically.
http://www.grants.gov
Managing Agency: HHS

E-Travel: GSA recently announced all three E-Travel vendors' systems were approved and certified as ready to make federal employees' travel easier. The systems will handle travel arrangements from beginning to end, including booking air travel, hotel accommodations and rental cars, obtaining supervisor approvals, interfacing with agency accounting systems and reimbursing employee expenses. Since the announcement, Treasury and HHS awarded E-Travel service contracts.
Managing Agency: GSA

IT Privacy and Security: Agency and Inspector General IT reports demonstrate Government-wide progress toward achieving IT security goals of the E-Gov Scorecard and implementing privacy provisions of the E-Government Act, although work remains. At this time, 70% of agency systems have identified and validated the effectiveness of security and privacy controls for each system - a process called certification and accreditation. This percentage is up from 62% at the start of the fiscal year. Furthermore, agency processes to identify, manage, and remediate security weaknesses are growing more effective. Agencies are also improving and integrating privacy impact assessments for their systems. These improvements, as well as the continued monitoring of agency activities through the President's Management Agenda Scorecard, are improving the security and privacy of the Federal government's information and systems.

Further information on Expanded Electronic Government, the E-Gov Report, or other E-Gov topics of interest can be found at www.egov.gov, the official web site of the President's E-Government Initiatives. The web site is an up-to-date, public source of information about the E-Gov Initiatives and their accomplishments. Additionally, information on the Lines of Business can be found at http://lobv.gsa.gov and information on the FEA can be found at www.feapmo.gov. Sincerely,
Karen Evans