Administration seeks to use surplus GSA funds for e-gov initiatives

The White House has asked lawmakers to allow the General Services Administration to use some of its surplus funds for e-government initiatives, agency officials announced Tuesday.

Bush administration officials sought more than $40 million last year for the Electronic Government Fund, but lawmakers appropriated only about $3 million for the fund. After consulting with the Office of Management and Budget, GSA officials decided to seek surplus money from the General Supply Fund, which would be used to fund "governmentwide e-gov projects," according to GSA budget documents.

The agency is attempting this alternative funding approach "knowing that discretionary spending would be very tight," according to GSA Budget Director Debi Schilling.

"Obviously, the administration has not been successful" seeking standard congressional appropriations for e-government initiatives, Schilling said.

The amount of surplus funding moved to the e-government fund would not exceed $40 million under the terms of the proposal. GSA can now use surplus funding for e-government projects that are related to the General Supply Fund. Under the new initiative, officials would be able to apply the funding to any federal e-government project, according to Schilling.

GSA typically returns surplus funding each year to the Treasury Department. In fiscal 2002, for example, the agency returned $45 million. GSA officials have not finalized their accounting for fiscal 2003, but currently has $122 million in gross surplus funds. Some money might still be withdrawn from that amount for unexpected costs, such as vehicle replacement.

GSA projects the fiscal 2005 surplus for the General Supply Fund to be $75 million. If Congress approves GSA's plan-and the current surplus is not drawn down-$40 million would be put toward the e-government fund and $35 million would be returned to the Treasury.

During a briefing Tuesday, GSA officials also said that more government agencies than expected are adopting the FirstGov.gov search engine. In fiscal 2003, 586 government agency Web sites used the search engine, and GSA estimated that the effort saved $21 million that would have been spent on purchasing search engine software.

In the fiscal 2005 GSA budget proposal, the White House also is seeking $4.6 million to support identity management and electronic authentication efforts. According to budget documents, GSA's Office of Governmentwide Policy "is working [toward] establishing cross-agency governance structure and process for e-authentication and identity management in order to unify government systems."

The e-authentication request is an increase of $600,000 from fiscal 2004. Overall, the GSA budget request is about $24 billion, an increase of about $700 million. Almost all of this money, however, comes from reimbursements, sales or lease income, according to GSA.