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GCN Home > 08/16/04 issue

Inside the evaluations

By Jason Miller, GCN Staff

Once you submit a business case, where does it go? How OMB’s team of evaluators put it through the wringer

During his five years with the Office of Management and Budget, fall meant two things to Tony Frater: the start of the Green Bay Packers’ season and the reading of IT business cases. Many hours of reading.

The Madison, Wis., native and owner of one share of Packers’ stock would spend most of his week reading and evaluating agency business cases before carving out three hours on Sunday to watch his beloved team.

“I would rather stay up to 3 a.m. reading business cases than miss the game,” said Frater, who now is vice president at the Dutko Group of Washington. “The end of September through Thanksgiving is the real crunch. You just know you will be swamped.”

There are about 20 full-time OMB staff members and three or five federal employees detailed to OMB from other agencies who each fall dedicate their weekdays, weekends and family lives to evaluating and scoring more than 1,000 agency IT business cases.

The business cases eventually go through one of the OMB director’s two or three dozen review sessions that help shape part of the president’s budget request, which is submitted to Congress in February.

Former and current OMB officials and staff members variously describe this time of year as “the low point of their OMB job,” “the most pressurized time of the year” and “not fun.”

Why do feds continue to put up with the annual demands of this work?

Their answers ranged from dedication to the job, to being public policy wonks, to the idea of suffering through the little bit of bad to get to the good.

“There are other things that make working at OMB worthwhile,” said a former staff member who requested anonymity. “We understood what has to get done and we were the ones who had to do it. It’s a piece to the larger puzzle.”