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GCN Home > 07/05/04 issue

OMB’s advice: Communicate and innovate

By Richard W. Walker, GCN Staff

For President Bush, effective implementation of e-government is critical to making government more responsive and cost-effective. Its success, he says, depends on agencies working as a team across traditional boundaries, focusing on citizens rather than individual agency needs.

The Office of Management and Budget’s E-government initiatives are the most visible manifestation of the government’s cross-agency efforts. Karen Evans, OMB administrator for e-government and IT, and OMB’s five e-government portfolio managers talked about those efforts in a recent interview with GCN staff writer Jason Miller and associate editor Richard W. Walker.
Jack Koller
Image:
Jack Koller
On hand were portfolio managers Shivani Desai, government to business; Jack Koller, government to citizen; Jeanette Thornton, e-authentication; Tim Young, internal efficiency and effectiveness; and Kamela White, government to government.

GCN: Over the last two-plus years, how have the challenges of working across agencies changed?

THORNTON: We have definitely seen it get a lot easier for the past couple of years. When we first started this, people didn’t have a good sense of what it would be like to develop IT solutions across an agency. Lots of times, they were just challenged implementing an IT system within their own agency or among many different bureaus within an agency. People really better understand challenges and how to better work across agency boundaries, which is no easy thing in itself.

GCN: In what ways do agencies better understand?

THORNTON: We’ve learned how to put in place governance structures that bring together agency partners so all have a voice in the decisions and direction of the initiative. We’ve learned how to better communicate with the agencies so information is shared not just between the managing partner and OMB, but also with the partners, which is a very important thing. Partners need to know that their money is being spent toward the thing they want it to be spent for.

WHITE: In the beginning we had these great ideas of how we can better leverage across the federal government and try to break down stovepipes across common business functions, which a number of e-government initiatives represented. So that action, which brings us performance improvements and efficiencies, helps to chip away those cultural challenges in agencies because they are realizing there are benefits from the initiatives.

More news on related topics: Business Process Management, Executive Center, Great Managers, Management



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