Government Computer News
Hill moves reflect e-gov’s lower profile
Recent congressional moves leave little doubt about who lawmakers want to control funding for e-government projects: themselves.
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Appropriators, who over the last three years have allocated only $13 million of the $100 million requested for the E-Government Fund, recently sought to chop off another funding source for e-government projects.
The House Appropriations Committee last month approved a measure to prohibit the Office of Management and Budget from using surplus funding from the General Services Administration’s Federal Supply Service account to pay for cross-agency e-government projects.
The full House has not voted on the Fiscal 2005 Treasury, Transportation and General Government appropriations bill, in which the language appears, and will not before the August recess ends Sept. 7. The Senate has moved only four bills out of committee, including those for the Defense and Homeland Security departments, military construction and legislative branch.
The moves come as e-government efforts, a high priority in recent years, seem to be losing some of their luster. With the administration focused on Iraq and re-election, and with many agency budgets tightening, e-government no longer commands the support it once did.
An appropriations staff member said the bill was an effort to improve financial accountability among e-government projects.
“We want to make a funding decision once,” said John Scofield, a committee spokesman. “OMB should come back and try to reverse it, not go around it.”
The committee did fulfill the administration’s $5 million request for the e-government fund—$2 million more than OMB received in 2004.
But the committee said it did not want to “relinquish oversight over the development and procurement of IT projects of the various agencies under its jurisdiction” by allowing e-gov projects to use FSS’ surplus funding.
Price check
Lawmakers also told GSA to evaluate pricing of its services to see if it is overcharging agencies. And finally, legislators said OMB should request and justify funding for e-government projects in its own budget request.
The committee decision does not stop GSA from using the money for projects it manages, however. In 2002, the agency spent $25 million in FSS surplus revenues on three projects: the Integrated Acquisition Environment, Federal Asset Sales and E-Travel.
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