OMB

As announced by OMB last Thursday and widely reported since then, the Obama Administration has issued an implementation strategy for IT reform over the next 18 months.  Much attention has been focused on key elements of the plan, including using budget authority to change or stop major IT systems, incentives for modular development of technology, improved communications among stakeholders across government and with industry and the establishment of program management as a profession; I

Improving the cost, quality, and performance of financial management operations and systems is one of the Obama’s administration’s top management priorities. While the financial management community has made significant progress over the years, it continues to face challenges in meeting some of the basic standards for accounting and reporting.

Initially, these comparisons were only among the 24 major departments and agencies.  Today, Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey data are available to line managers across 28,000 work units.  The survey results are used to gauge employee engagement, and to fine tune management priorities.  Most career senior executives are held accountable for trends in employee survey results in their organizations. 

Experience from industry practices and industry research regarding personnel security provide interesting insights and lessons learned for government to consider.   These findings emerged from a recent roundtable discussion held in November and co-hosted by the IBM Center for The Business of Government and the National Academy of Public Administration.  The roundtable intended to help identify commercial benchmarks that can inform government choices.

Michael Keegan

Trump's pick for OMB sounds enthusiastic about the Data Act. Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) stressed the importance of getting accurate and useful data in order to inform his and President Donald Trump's decision-making during his confirmation hearings to lead the Office of Management and Budget.

Background.  Reform legislation adopted in 2004 in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that restructured the intelligence community included requirements to standardize and better align the background security clearance process across agencies.  But in the years that followed, the consolidation efforts took time, culminating in a 2008 presidential directive to improve the process.

But little seems to happen.  There have been dozens of studies and reports over the past three decades.  However, there has not been a major overhaul since 1978, and many piecemeal legislative efforts, such as performance pay and streamlining the classification system, have been derailed.  So pragmatically, what can be done in the near-term, without a major legislative effort? 

The Government Accountability Office study went on to note: “Agencies reported 3,427 IT staff employed just to maintain legacy-programming languages, such as COBOL (1,085) and Fortran (613).”  In addition, the Office of Management and Budget recently observed that “43 percent of federal IT projects are reported to be over budget or behind schedule.”

Yesterday I attended what I thought would be a yawner – a Brookings seminar on e-rulemaking.  But it turned out to be a carnival of different professional streams – administrative procedures lawyers, citizen engagement advocates, technology experts, transparency advocates, and regular civil servants trying to get their jobs done.  They even created a Tweet stream - #erulemaking!

The IT Reform policies announced by OMB Deputy Director Jeffrey Zients and Federal CIO Vivek Kundra two weeks ago continue to have an impact on the IT community and beyond.  Their strategy drew in good measure from government and industry recommendations, one of the most prominent of which was a study by the TechAmerica Foundation, entitled “Government Technology Opportunity in the 21^st Century” (www.techamericafoundation/gto21) (I served as an advisor to the Commission).