OMB coaches technology vendors on how to sell to the government

A senior Bush administration official coached a select group of technology vendors Tuesday on how to sell to the federal government, which will spend more than $52 billion on information technology in fiscal 2003. "We're clearly going to ramp up the demand for your services," said Mark Forman, associate director for information technology and e-government at the Office of Management and Budget, at a briefing on the fiscal 2003 budget for IT vendors and the press. He warned industry officials that the fiscal 2003 budget reflects a change in how the federal government will purchase IT and IT-related services. "The federal government has become a solutions buyer," Forman said, and is no longer "just putting PCs on desks." Because agencies will purchase $30 billion in "solutions" in fiscal 2003, Forman asked the vendors to bring their best practices to government. Vendors should develop technology solutions to agency performance problems since OMB is grading agencies on how well their IT investments contribute to gains in performance, he said. According to Forman, agencies will soon be in the market for billions of dollars in security products. "There is no question agencies have more security funding. Business cases without security were flunked or put on a watch list," he said. Cybersecurity spending is up from $2.7 billion in fiscal 2002 to $4.2 billion in fiscal 2003, largely because of security gaps exposed in the 2000 Government Information Security and Reform Act reports submitted by agencies to OMB, Forman said. The budget also includes $20 million to create a program management office within the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office. The new management office will oversee the $722 million in homeland security IT projects included in the budget. OMB also used this year's budget process to evaluate the role of CIOs in departments and agencies, Forman said. While some CIOs have gained authority within their agencies and have developed strong IT architectures and capital planning processes, others have not been given their due, he said. OMB will support CIOs who have not been given proper authority and will tell agency leaders that CIOs play a necessary role, he said. He also said the person hired as OMB's deputy director for management will function as the federal government's CIO.