OMB to project savings of e-government projects in next budget
With an estimate showing consolidation projects have saved $5 billion, the oversight agency plans to publish savings of other technology ventures.
The Office of Management and Budget is preparing to announce the projected cost savings of the 25 e-government initiatives in the fiscal 2007 budget proposal.
Karen Evans, OMB's administrator for the Office of E-Government and Information Technology, said her biggest goal for the next year is to shift the way agencies view success from how much money is appropriated to how much money is saved.
"What are the results and how much money have we saved?" Evans said at luncheon sponsored by the Association for Federal Information Resources Management. "What are we getting for the $65 billion the taxpayers have entrusted us with?"
The process for measuring the cost savings will be based on earned value management data, Evans said, which is a method of measuring the performance of government contacts.
In a meeting over the summer with President Bush, Evans said, the president was impressed when she told him that a conservative estimate of the savings of OMB's lines-of-business projects, intended to consolidate agencies' common functions, was $5 billion. This is a conservative estimate based on a select number of major agencies' cost savings, she said.
At the meeting, agency officials were sitting at a table according to their e-government management report card ranking, with those with red marks sitting furthest away from the president.
"I don't like red. I don't want to have any more red," Bush said, according to Evans.
President Bush takes the score cards seriously, Evans said, and discussion of the quarterly management report card comes up in Cabinet-level meetings.
"The leaders are holding people to these results," Evans said.
Agencies' work on the e-government initiatives for financial management and human resources has been exceptional, she said, and while the work on the payroll initiative was difficult, it was successful in achieving cost savings.
She would not speculate on whether there will be new consolidation projects and said that answer will have to come with the announcement of the next budget in February.