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STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE SEAN O'KEEFE
DEPUTY DIRECTOR
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
BEFORE THE
UNITED STATES SENATE
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JULY 11, 2001
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the Committee
to discuss the Administration's views on our electronic
government initiative and to comment on the legislation pending
before the Committee. We welcome your interest and the continued
opportunity to work with you to strengthen the initiative.
Electronic Government is one of the key elements in the
President's Management and Performance Plan. This administration
believes e-government must be integrated with the larger picture
of management reform that also includes budget and performance
integration, strategic management of human capital, competitive
sourcing, and improving financial performance. Our strongest
view is that the combination of all these initiatives pursued
concurrently is far greater than the mere sum of the parts. Each
element of the management agenda is dependent on the others to
assure maximum advantage. As such, e-government and the
employment of information technology tools must be a part of
this broader management reform framework. This is the context of
our vision for the electronic government initiative.
The Vision
This administration's vision is to champion a
citizen-centric electronic government framework that will result
in an order of magnitude improvement in the federal government ’s
value to the citizen. The vision is results oriented, market
based, and citizen centered, as outlined in the President’s
Budget. To accomplish this vision we must refocus resources to
assure that information technology facilitates agency
administration efficiencies, but m ost importantly, to maximize
citizen access. We must simplify business processes to maximize
the benefit of technology, resulting in processes that will be
faster, cheaper, and more efficient. We must manage information
flows and link them across agencies and the Federal government
so that we can find and use what we collect now and in the
future.
If we can do all these things we will go a long way to
fulfill the President's vision of an electronic government
framework that truly harnesses the modern tools of the
information age. Specifically, we must focus on the following:
Citizen Centric Strategy
E-government must be judged on the value it provides to all
Americans. Simply going "on-line" is not useful unless
it is built around the needs of the users inside and outside of
government. The question is how to make government easier,
quicker, cheaper, and more responsive. Our initiatives will
address four broad groups:
Individuals: We are focussed on building easy to find
one-stop-shops for citizens-- creating single points of easy
entry to access high quality government services.
Businesses: We must reduce burden on businesses through the
use of the Internet. This is not about building government
websites, but rather about being able to communicate with
businesses in the language of e-business. We cannot make
business report the same data to multiple agencies because
government fails to reuse the data appropriately or fails to
take advantage of commercial electronic transaction protocols.
This can serve to streamline the myriad reporting requirements
as well as facilitate a more efficient means for business to do
business with the government.
Intergovernmental: We must make it easier for states to meet
reporting requirements, especially for block grants, and provide
the valuable information the federal government must have to
measure the performance and results of national programs.
Intragovernmental: We must automate internal processes to
reduce costs for federal government agency administration by
using best practices in areas such as supply chain management
and financial management.
Simplifying Processes
Making it easy for citizens to get service is constrained by
complicated government procedures. This Committee has
highlighted the need for agencies to fix core management
problems before investing in information technology solutions.
As information flows are managed, consolidated and linked, and
before new information technology is applied, it becomes
imperative that we re-engineer processes to eliminate redundancy
and take advantage of technology –
to unify and simplify the process rather than merely automating
what has occurred to date. Such a dramatic change in
organizations can be difficult but it is the best way to become
more efficient.
Bridging Islands of Automation
Chronic management problems in government have resulted from
operation in isolation. For example, logistics, procurement, and
property disposal functions are integral parts of the same
supply chain, but have traditionally been managed as separate
functions. Information collection, data mining and analysis,
information dissemination, and information preservation have not
been seen as part of the same information life cycle. The
problems of isolation are only magnified when automation is
attempted. Indeed, the IT architectures of the past decade have
facilitated isolation such that a branch can operate as its own
island, complete with databases and computer power that would
have required an extensive data center 15 years ago. We must
look to the best practices of business and public management to
link these islands into a unified chain.
Information Architecture and Knowledge Management
To reap the benefits of e-government, information must be
viewed as a resource. We have always invested in information
processing, but information itself must be considered as the
investment. This Committee has championed this philosophy for
many years and this administration embraces it. In addition, we
must start managing our information across our programs and
agencies to improve our decisions and our efforts at program
evaluation; moving to knowledge management will lead to better
service, faster and at lower costs. But to do this requires data
standards and a plan to guarantee the systems can interact -- an
information architecture that recognizes the results that
investing in information has on agency business processes. These
two key features of information management -- knowledge
management and an information architecture -- are inherently
interrelated processes and must be considered core efforts of
any agency movement to electronic government.
Implementation of the Vision
All of this can come together in a strategy to make the
government a "click and mortar" enterprise, where
on-line applications that serve businesses (G2B), inter- and
intra-governmental needs (G2G), and ultimately citizens (G2C)
are made more accessible, effective and efficient. In adopting a
"click and mortar" model we must use the best
practices of industry with regard to customer relationship
management, supply chain management, enterprise information
management, and management of change.
OMB's new Associate Director for Information Technology and
E-Government, Mark Forman, will lead this strategy, focusing on
how information is supplied to the government, managed at an
enterprise level within and across agencies, and ultimately
supplied to citizens in a way that is linked to agency missions
and performance goals.
Funding
Agency investment in information and IT must work toward this
vision. The President's Budget is clear about our plans to use
capital planning to improve performance, achieve outcomes from
investments that match agency strategic priorities, and provide
real benefits to the public. As major corporations have adapted
to the digital economy, business cases and IT capital planning
have been critical elements of their transition. These elements
will be the core of our transition as well. This Committee has
been a leader in promoting IT capital planning and the need for
IT projects to have strong business cases, and OMB pledges its
full support to these efforts as well.
Many have expressed specific concerns about the funding
required to meet the goals and changes of e-government. Given
the problems we have had in capital planning over many years, it
is inconceivable that we do not have the room to find money to
start e-government projects in our current expenditures if we
simply stop funding what is not working. Last year's Federal IT
Budget portfolio totaled approximately $40 billion and included
over 600 major projects; this year we estimate that almost $45
billion will be spent on major IT projects, infrastructure,
architecture and planning. As we prepare for the fiscal year
2003 budget submission to Congress, our plan is to discontinue
IT investments that are not relevant to agency or multi-agency
missions, or are behind schedule, over budget or not delivering
intended benefits or efficiencies. The e-government framework
must be based on performance.
At the same time, the Administration agrees with the premise
of S. 803, that separate agency appropriations for e-government
make it difficult to fund cross-agency projects. As such, a $100
million "e-government
fund"
is proposed in the President's Budget, with $20 million proposed
for FY 2002, to help leverage innovative interagency projects.
If the Congress enacts appropriations for this purpose, the fund
would support multi-agency e-government initiatives that are
currently difficult for any one agency to bear. The fund will
leverage cross-agency work in e-government that serves citizens
and businesses, and could drastically improve citizens' ability
to access federal services and federal online information. The
fund would provide for collaborative e-government activities,
supporting missions and goals that affect multiple agencies
without introducing interagency funding conflicts. Our ultimate
goal is to rationalize and interrelate the $45 billion currently
budgeted for IT. This government-wide fund must tie to IT
capital planning and performance standards that are linked to
strategic goals and outcomes.
In sum, our proposed e-government fund provides sufficient
seed money to begin the effort to establish the larger
e-government framework previously described. We believe that the
President's funding request is the appropriate amount to begin
leveraging current IT spending to make better use of existing
agency investments in IT.
S. 803
We welcome this committee's focus on e-government, as it is
consistent with many of the same points in the Administration's
e-government vision and funding plan. We would like to work with
this Committee on crafting legislation that could drive real
change in this area. However, while we believe that there are
many positive aspects of S. 803, there appears to be a
philosophical difference between S. 803, as introduced, and the
President ’s
vision. We see IT and e-government not as a programmatic end,
but as a tool to enable the President’s
vision through enabling open access, efficient government
operations, and effective decision-making.
In our judgment, it is crucial that we reverse the trend of
stove-piping the IT community from the management work that
needs to be accomplished in all sectors of government. We look
forward to working with you to ensure that any legislation does
not treat e-government as a series of discrete information
technology issues. We also look forward to working with this
Committee to integrate information technology with broader
management and program goals. As stated earlier, this
administration views e-government as part of overall management
reform, integrated with the other parts of the management agenda
in a way that moves government performance forward.
Specific areas of concern that we would like to further
discuss with this Committee include:
Performance Goals. We are not
sure the bill advances, in any measurable way, the results we
are expecting from the "President's Management and
Performance Plan." To be effective, legislation on
electronic government must contain performance standards.
E-government is a means to meet agency strategic objectives, but
its value must be judged by the agency’s
ability to meet those objectives. S. 803 sets out to promote
electronic government but requires performance standards to
measure the bottom line in terms of agency efficiency and
effectiveness.
Creation of Federal CIO. The
President believes that the OMB Deputy Director for Management
should be the governmentwide CIO because all management
challenges are intertwined. This move ensures senior level
commitment to IT and information resource management issues. It
also guarantees linkage to the budget process, and it assures
management attention by agency heads while preserving their
authority, and responsibility to the President, to direct their
agencies. Similarly the Administration would have concerns with
any legislation that would transfer the computer security
standard-setting functions of the Secretary of Commerce under
the Computer Security Act, as amended by the Clinger- Cohen Act
of 1996 (40 U.S.C. 1441). These are the core computer security
functions entrusted to the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) as an expert standards and technology agency
unconnected with defense or law enforcement agencies. We would
not support shifting those functions, or re-ordering the
relative functions of OMB and the Secretary of Commerce as to
computer security standards.
As I mentioned earlier, we have created the post of Associate
Director for Information Technology and E-Government reporting
to the Deputy Director for Management who will work to fulfill
the President's vision of using information technology to create
a citizen-centric government. As the senior federal e-government
executive, he will be responsible for ensuring that the federal
government takes maximum advantage of digital technology and
best practices to improve quality, effectiveness, and
efficiency. He will also lead the development and implementation
of federal information technology policy. He will ensure that
e-government strengthens the ability of agencies to address
customer needs while being attentive to the unique missions of
agencies. In deploying e-government he will ensure that the
privacy of citizens is protected. One of the post's first jobs
is to put together an e-government strategy for the Federal
government. We will work with this Committee in developing this
strategy and its direction.
Proliferation of Forums. The
bill proposes that OMB creates and leads numerous distinct
councils, forums, and boards. OMB could currently create any of
these on an as needed basis. The administrative costs to
maintain all of these groups would be high and their benefit
would not be consistent. In addition, their continued presence
would take away attention from the work that needs to be done to
automate government processes and would often duplicate exiting
authorities.
Reports. The current version
of legislation also has numerous reporting requirements for OMB
and the agencies. It is unclear what problems will be solved by
establishing more management reporting requirements rather than
more efficiently utilizing the extant information. We seek to
establish accountability standards linked to measures of
performance for electronic government and will work with this
Committee to formulate such measures.
The bill also includes a number of provisions with which we
agree. We have been actively pursuing several similar objectives
to include the improvements being made at FirstGov, development
of a Federal Public Key Infrastructure to provide for
interoperability in using digital signatures for agency
programs, promotion of geospatial information standards, and
issues of access for persons with disabilities in implementing
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. We concur that these are
important public policy initiatives. Most importantly, the bill
highlights an e-government fund similar to that currently
proposed by the Administration. The support of this Committee on
e-government -- particularly in focusing attention on the need
for appropriations that support interagency activities -- is
most welcome.
Conclusion
The Federal Government can secure greater services at a lower
cost through electronic government. By integrating e-government
as part of our management agenda, we can best achieve the
promise of electronic government.
The President's e-government initiatives, coupled with the
important legislation this committee has championed including
the Clinger-Cohen Act, GPEA, GISRA and the PRA, provide
sufficient authority for us to make the transformation to an
e-government. We look forward to working with this Committee in
this effort. Consistent with our strategy, we would also welcome
working with this Committee on e-government initiatives that are
consistent with the philosophy discussed this morning.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for your time. We look forward to
working with Congress and this Committee to reach our shared
goal of an e-government framework.
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