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GCN Home > 10/09/06 issue

Negotiations renew hope for e-gov

OMB makes headway in convincing appropriations staff of programs’ benefits

By Jason Miller, GCN Staff

Five budget cycles into e-government, the Senate finally seems to be grasping the finer points of the administration’s effort to make agencies act more like businesses.

For five years, funding requests for the 25 Quicksilver projects and the E-Government Fund mostly ran into a wall on Capitol Hill. But this year, Office of Management and Budget officials say, congressional staff members for the first time didn’t focus on whether e-government is valuable as a concept, but wanted to know about benefits the initiatives bring to taxpayers.

“This was the most progress we’ve made with the Hill,” said Karen Evans, OMB’s administrator for e-government and IT. “These staffers really wanted to understand how e-government works. This was not a value judgement, or [a discussion] about money.”

Evans, her staff and some officials from the Veterans Affairs Department met with staff members of the Senate Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Subcommittee late last month to explain why lawmakers should approve the transfer of agency funds to support e-government projects.

VA spending bill

The Senate version of the VA spending bill, as it stands now, includes some of the same provisions limiting agencies’ ability to transfer funds for e-government as last year. Lawmakers did not include any funding for e-government initiatives.

“The committee is not convinced these initiatives add value to the Department of Veterans Affairs,” according to the Senate report issued with the bill.

The report noted that VA’s e-government obligations rose 60 percent from fiscal 2005 to 2006, and the department’s funding request increased again by almost 6 percent for 2007. “The committee is concerned the funds needed for this program are growing at an alarming rate, while the utility to the VA is taking the opposite track. Future budget requests for e-government initiatives should include a detailed explanation of how they directly benefit the Department of Veterans Affairs.”

The House version of the VA bill doesn’t mention these concerns but, like many bills last year, it would require VA to receive approval of the transfer from the committee.

More news on related topics: Business Process Management, E-Government, Management, IT Management



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