Since the launch of the first Presidential E-government Initiative in April 2002, we have successfully completed major development milestones and are driving increased resources towards greater adoption and utilization of these services by citizens, businesses and government agencies.

Utilization of E-Government Initiatives

While most of the 24 E-Government initiatives have deployed their respective solutions to date, review and analysis of performance metrics and existing marketing plans identified new opportunities to expand utilization of these services to existing and new customer segments. Increased utilization not only reduces program costs, but provides high-quality services to untapped citizen, business and government markets. From mid-October until late December, a national public relations firm will deliver media strategies after an OMB review of their extensive analysis of the goals, performance benchmarks and operations of each of the selected initiatives. The primary purpose is to capture and convert the audience to the E-Government initiative service offerings, to create and enhance partnerships, and to encourage a one-to-one dialogue with the audiences we have captured. Specific strategic marketing plans will be developed for 10 initiatives.

Each strategy will provide an integrated approach including media outreach, online partnerships, word-of-mouth marketing, email outreach, search engine marketing, partnerships and content placement through states, businesses and the public and a two-way dialogue with all audiences to provide meaningful relationships for future messaging. The initiatives will implement the marketing strategies beginning in FY05.

Independent Verification and Validation of E-Gov Initiatives

Each of the 24 E-Government initiatives was selected to provide a unique service to citizens, businesses and Federal users and exemplify the opportunities that sound IT management, planning and implementation provide. In order to improve service delivery and strengthen IT and program management, OMB is selecting an outside firm to analyze existing initiative operations, perform a gap analysis and to execute an independent verification and validation (IV&V) of each project, as requested. The purpose of this effort is to review and assess the performance of the Presidential E-Gov Initiatives to insure compliance to legislation and OMB policies and procedures including but not limited to privacy, section 508, IT security and earned value management (EVM). Once the contract is awarded, these tasks will be executed for all initiatives by the end of December 2004. Each initiative will be required to remediate any weaknesses found in the gap analysis and optional IV&V effort.

Recent Results in the Expanding Electronic Government:

President's E-Government Initiatives:

USA Services: USA Services signed working agreements with 75% of their target federal agencies and during FY04, the Initiative handled 3.5 million government-wide telephone inquiries and 74,000 email inquiries while maintaining a response time of 12 hours or less. Firstgov.gov, the U.S. Government's Official Web Portal was rated the number one federal web site by Brown University in the fifth annual e-government report. USA Services is in the process of creating a web toolkit for agencies to replicate the success of their web site in efforts to help other federal agencies.

Recruitment One-Stop: Since the re-launch of USAJOBS.opm.gov, Recruitment One-Stop has had job seekers log nearly 88 million visits to the web site and created over 800,000 new on-line resumes. They continue to improve the web site with new features such as email announcements of job openings with extra information including salary and closing date. Currently, agencies are in the process of shutting down duplicative employment sites and transitioning operations to USAJOBS.

E-Authentication: The E-Authentication initiative recently completed a number of critical milestones:. NIST released technical guidance as a companion to the E-Authentication policy guidance that describes the various technologies that can be used for the four e-authentication assurance levels. This document is essential to ensuring that proper technologies are employed to provide online transactions within federal agencies. E-Authentication has added a number of vendors to its "Approved Technology Provider List" and providers to its "Trusted Credential Service Provider List". These vendors provide agencies new and expanded services to support online authorization, authentication and transactions.

E-Loans: In April 2004, E-Loans completed the integration of all participating agencies to the Pay.gov web site. Pay.gov satisfies agencies and consumers demands for electronic alternatives by providing the ability to complete forms, make payments and submit queries 24 hours a day electronically. They recently completed the development and launch of a web site to make available to agencies and lenders the default data on HUD's Credit Alert Interactive Voice Response System (CAIVRS). The default data helps agencies and lenders manage risk and use taxpayer monies more efficiently.

E-Payroll: E-Payroll is in the process of consolidating all 26 federal payroll systems down to 2 provider partnerships and has migrated 7 agencies during FY04. The most recent migrations include: NASA, NSF, RRB, SLSDC, and the Federal Protected Services. The Initiative is working closely with the selected payroll service providers and the remaining agencies to complete all migrations in FY05 and FY06. E-Payroll created the Payroll Advisory Council which is chartered to provide support and advice on the development and implementation of payroll policy in regard to the Initiative.

Lines of Business (LoB): OMB continues to drive implementation of the Financial Management, Human Resources, and Grants Management LoB initiatives. Building upon the efforts of the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) Program to identify duplicative and overlapping information technology investments, multi-agency task forces have developed business driven; common solutions and target architectures that span across the Federal government. In addition, joint business cases were developed for each LoB and submitted to OMB in September. OMB is currently evaluating the proposed business cases as part of the President's FY06 Budget.

Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA): OMB continues its final review of the draft Data Reference Model, with distribution to agencies for comment anticipated during this quarter. OMB released its FY06 Additional Instructions and Reference Model Changes Summary for agency use in budget preparation. The Federal CIO Council has now begun work on Phase II of a new security profile to be embedded within the FEA reference frameworks.

IT Privacy and Security: Quarterly Federal Information Security Management Act(FISMA) performance updates show Government-wide progress in achieving IT security goals of the E-Gov Scorecard and implementing privacy provisions of the E-Government Act. As of September 15, 2004, 83% of agency systems have effective security and privacy controls in place - a process called certification and accreditation. This percentage is up from 62% at the end of FY03. 87% of agency systems have IT security costs "built in" to the system costs. This percentage is up from 77% at the end of FY03. 61% of agency systems have a tested contingency plan in place. This percentage is up from 48% at the end of FY03. The Inspector General at over half (15 of 24) of the E-Government Act agencies have verified effectiveness of the processes to track and correct IT security weaknesses.

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 Initiative. The web site is an up-to-date, public source of information about the E-Gov Initiative and its accomplishments.