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FEDERAL E-GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES: ARE WE

HEADED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION

POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS AND

THE CENSUS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MARCH 13, 2003

Serial No. 108–6

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS BELL, Texas

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

PETER SIRH, Staff Director

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Deputy Staff Director

RANDY KAPLAN, Senior Counsel/Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHILIP M. SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL

RELATIONS AND THE CENSUS

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida, Chairman

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

DOUG OSE, California

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

BOB DIX, Staff Director

SCOTT KLEIN, Professional Staff Member

URSULA WOJCIECHOWSKI, Clerk

DAVID MCMILLEN, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on March 13, 2003 ............................................................................ 1

Statement of:

Forman, Mark, Associate Director, Information Technology and Electronic

Government, Office of Management and Budget; Joel C. Willemssen,

Managing Director, Information Technology, U.S. General Accounting

Offfice; Patricia McGinnis, president and CEO, the Council for Excellence in Government; and Leonard M. Pomata, president, Webmethods

Government ................................................................................................... 12

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Missouri, prepared statement of .................................................................. 11

Forman, Mark, Associate Director, Information Technology and Electronic

Government, Office of Management and Budget, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 16

McGinnis, Patricia, president and CEO, the Council for Excellence in

Government, prepared statement of ............................................................ 66

Pomata, Leonard M., president, Webmethods Government, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 74

Putnam, Hon. Adam H., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Florida, prepared statement of ................................................................ 5

Willemssen, Joel C., Managing Director, Information Technology, U.S.

General Accounting Offfice, prepared statement of ................................... 33

(1)

FEDERAL E-GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES: ARE

WE HEADED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?

THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 2003

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS AND THE CENSUS, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Adam Putnam (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Putnam, Clay, and Miller.

Staff present: Bob Dix, staff director; Scott Klein, Lori Martin,

and Chip Walker, professional staff members; Ursula

Wojciechowski, clerk; John Hambel, counsel; David McMillen, minority professional staff member; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. PUTNAM. This hearing of the Subcommittee on Technology,

Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census

will come to order.

Good afternoon and welcome to the first hearing of the newly reorganized subcommittee. I am honored to have been selected by

Chairman Davis to serve as chairman of this subcommittee. Despite of what this might look like, this is not ‘‘bring your son to

work day.’’ They really do let people this young in Congress. We

look forward to an exciting term with this subcommittee. There is

a tremendous amount of work to be done. Chairman Davis laid the

groundwork and blazed a path, particularly on some of the issues

we will be discussing today. He did a tremendous job of beginning

the process of bringing the Federal Government into the 21st century. He and I will continue to work together on this issue in the

weeks and months to come.

I also look forward to welcoming my good friend and ranking

member and fellow sophomore, Mr. Lacy Clay from Missouri. I

have no doubt that we will have an outstanding working relationship throughout the term, and both his staff and our staff will continue to work together for the good of the subcommittee.

I will draw your attention later in the hearing to the images on

the screens, which are a number of the Web sites that we will be

discussing as part of the E-government initiative. I recognize some

faces in here this afternoon who were present during the morning

hearing. The Web sites we will be showing you this afternoon are

not nearly as interesting as the ones the full committee was showing this morning.

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Before I talk specifically about today’s hearing on the current

status of the Federal Government’s E-government initiative,

though, I would like to speak briefly about my vision for the subcommittee’s work during the 108th Congress. We have outlined an

aggressive agenda and I am anxious to get the ball rolling. I expect

to examine closely the intergovernmental relations in the areas of

emergency response, land management, disaster management, as

well as Federal grant disbursement.

In the area of the census, the subcommittee will continue to examine the American Community Survey and ensure that the census is an accurate count based on real numbers. The subcommittee

will examine data sharing and privacy issues, with an eye toward

the sharing of information within and between governments, looking in particular at programs such as the Total Information Awareness Program through the Department of Defense.

We will examine the President’s recently submitted cybersecurity

proposal and the security of our infrastructure for our financial

markets, public utilities and other critical systems. In IT management and E-government, the subcommittee will examine agency

and department Web site development, cross-agency coordination,

acquisition strategy and performance results.

I hope that these items give a flavor for the direction this subcommittee will take in the coming months. We do have an aggressive agenda, and we intend to provide vigorous oversight of the

areas under the subcommittee’s jurisdiction.

Today’s hearing focuses on the subject of E-government, which is,

simply put, the ability of the Federal Government to use technology, particularly Web-based Internet applications, to enhance

access to government information and delivery of information services to citizens, business partners, Federal employees and other

agencies. At the same time, E-government initiatives seek to make

the Federal Government itself more efficient, productive and costeffective.

I want to thank today’s witnesses for adjusting their schedules

to accommodate the rescheduling of the original hearing date.

Today we have an expert panel on E-government that will provide

us with their professional insight. I would like to welcome Mark

Forman, the Associate Director of Information Technology and

Electronic Government from the Office of Management and Budget;

Joel Willemssen, Managing Director of Information Technology

with the U.S. General Accounting Office; Patricia McGinnis, president and CEO of the Council for Excellence in Government; and

Leonard Pomata, president, webMethods Government.

The expansion of E-government was one of five key elements in

the President’s management agenda. The goal is to ‘‘champion citizen-centered electronic government that will result in a major improvement in the Federal Government’s value to the citizen.’’

The Office of Management and Budget developed a task force

known as the Quicksilver Process, and began to gather information

and strategize on E-government initiatives in August 2001. In all,

the task force identified over 350 potential E-government projects.

These projects were then faced into 40 portfolios of related ideas,

eliminating duplicates along the way. Eventually, with the final approval of the President’s Management Council, 24 initiatives were

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selected. OMB’s criteria for choosing initiatives included the potential value to customers, potential improvement in agency efficiency,

and the likelihood of deployment in 18 to 24 months.

Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis is to be

commended for the E-Government Act of 2002, which sought to improve IT investment and required OMB to provide an annual report to Congress on the status of E-government.

Rather than simply identify and report IT investment at each

agency, the E-Government Act forces a cultural change in IT procurement from consolidating and integrating IT investments to encouraging performance-based, citizen-centered, cross-agency planning. Under the act, the Office of Management and Budget has

been designated as the lead organization for all Federal Government IT purchasing and planning, and all Federal agencies must

comply with OMB guidance to ensure implementation of E-government.

Federal Government expenditures on IT will near $60 billion in

fiscal year 2004, making the Federal Government the largest purchaser of IT in the world. Simply because the Federal Government

spends the most does not mean that it spends that money wisely,

gets the most for its investment, or provides technologically advanced and easy to use services to the public. One of our most important missions on this subcommittee is to ensure to the greatest

extent possible a technologically advanced government providing

fast, efficient and needed services to the American public.

I want to thank each witness for taking the time to participate

in this important hearing, and thank you for your valuable contribution. Today’s hearing can be viewed live via Web cast by going

to http://reform.house.gov and then clicking on the link under ‘‘Live

Committee Broadcast.’’

Today, I am also pleased to announce that this subcommittee will

be the first subcommittee in the House to use video-to-text technology. In a few days, the public will be able to go to the committee’s home page and find a specific piece of video for this hearing

by doing a word, phrase or name search. They will then be given

a list of choices to choose from, and can view a video clip of 45 seconds in length containing the information they searched for. This

is a tremendous advance in the archiving and retrieval of historical

records in the House of Representatives. The Library of Congress,

in conjunction with FedNet, has been taking the lead in bringing

this technology to the House. Chairman Davis is to be commended

for bringing emerging technologies to this committee.

As we await the arrival of Mr. Clay and make additional introductions, I just want to take a couple of moments and talk about

the opportunities that we have from a technology perspective to redefine the way that the Federal Government interacts with its citizens and its taxpayers. As the youngest Member of Congress, there

is a generation of Americans out there who have grown up accustomed to certain technologies and a certain way of doing business

based on the newest and latest technologies. It has redefined their

relationship in recreation. It has redefined their relationships in

commerce and business, and it can redefine their relationship with

the government.

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As this new generation of voters comes online and becomes productive, tax-paying members of society and leaders in business and

leaders in the communities, they expect that the same conveniences and technologies that have been commonplace to them

throughout their life will be available from their government as

well. Unfortunately, the government has been lagging behind.

So as our taxpayers and as our consumers, our customers, our

citizens continue to have higher levels of expectations, the gap between the expectations and what the government is able to provide

is a gap that we need to work very hard to close and make sure

that those expectations are met and that we redefine that relationship.

As we await the arrival of Mr. Clay, I want to introduce the vice

chair of the subcommittee, Candice Miller. I know that she is ready

and eager to pull up her sleeves and get down to business. I would

like to yield now to her for a few opening remarks.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Adam H. Putnam follows:]

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Ms. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am certainly pleased

to serve here on this subcommittee with you and to be your vice

chairperson. I was interested to hear you talk about how we are

going to be on the leading edge as a committee to have all this

availability on the Internet. I think that is an appropriate role for

this subcommittee. I think it is wonderful that we are going to

have the opportunity to offer that to the taxpayers across the entire

Nation.

I am so excited about hearing from all of you today. I certainly

appreciate you all taking the time to come here today. I think Ecommerce and E-government is such an interesting area, certainly

with the exploding technology and what can happen. It is, I think,

very important for us to try to benchmark where we are as a Nation with E-government and where we have been and where we are

going. The Internet in many ways is a relatively new phenomena.

I hope to be able to bring my own experiences, perhaps my own

perspective, to this committee as well. I was a former Secretary of

State in my former life, for the last 8 years in Michigan. I was concerned with all the motor vehicle administrative matters. We actually had a very antiquated department—180 branch offices, 20 million transactions annually, and there was neither a fax machine

nor a copy machine in any of our branch offices, if you can imagine.

We became the first State agency actually in our State to do E-government, E-commerce. We architected all the data base where we

were actually able to take money from people for credit cards and

those kinds of things so they could do vehicle registrations, snowmobile, boat registration, what have you, via the Internet or fax or

touchtone phone—all of these kinds of things. We also architected

a kiosk program that we put out in shopping malls and that kind

of thing.

We used that as the foundation for a lot of the other State agencies—recreational kinds of things and all of these—to be able to be

a one-stop-shop for E-government in our State. As well—something

certainly worth mentioning as we are sitting here talking about

politics I suppose as the Chief Elections Officer I was also responsible for something that we called our qualified voter file in Michigan. We had a very decentralized system. In other words, normally

in every State it is the local county clerk that maintains the voter

registration rolls. In Michigan, it was every local city, municipal

clerk. We have about 1,800 various voter registration files floating

around there in Michigan. We built a statewide computerized voter

registration list, which actually was noted in the Ford-Carter Presidential Commission report on election reform as an outstanding national model on how you can have a Statewide computerized voter

registration file when you are doing election reform and these

kinds of things.

So I am very, very excited to be able to work with all of you as

we go forward here. There are so many things, as the chairman has

said, not only the new generation, but certainly those of us that are

starting to feel more comfortable about accessing information electronically and using the Internet for so many kinds of services, look

to government to be more progressive perhaps than we have been

in the past. I think it is for all of us to ensure that all of these

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services and all of the different governmental agencies is accessible

and easy to use and in that kind of a format.

Additionally, I know not at this hearing, but we will be discussing privacy concerns as well. And of course, all of us in government

that have responsibilities for maintaining data bases and what

have you, have to be concerned about intervention, sometimes over

the line by government into personal privacy as well. Who is going

to have the information, how is it going to be utilized, who will

have the ability to access it—those kinds of questions as well.

So I am very excited to hear your testimony and again appreciate

all of you coming today. Thank you.

Mr. PUTNAM. I thank the gentlelady. I am notified that Congressman Clay will be right with us. He is wrapping up a vote in another committee.

Before we get to the witnesses, I do want to introduce the staff.

We were here until 2 a.m. doing budget work, and of course some

of the unsung heroes in this process are staff. I want to introduce

to you and to the audience, as you all have issues, the folks who

make these things happen. I will let Mr. Clay introduce the minority staff. The majority staff, Bob Dix is our staff director. He is a

former staff member for the DC Subcommittee; former locally elected official, and former president and CEO of a technology company

himself. He brings a broad background of both public and private

sector service.

Scott Klein is our professional staff member, IT Government Relations, for both TRW and BDM are in his background, as well as

some work for Senator Warner. He is a Virginia Tech guy, handling our tech issues. Lori Martin, another professional staffer, senior research analyst, media assistant for Podesta Matoon. She is a

lawyer from Regent University. She handles our privacy and information policy issues. Chip Walker, former deputy staff director for

the Subcommittee on Civil Service, Census and Agency Organization; staff director of the Subcommittee on the Census. He got his

education at Long Island University and handles all of our census

issues. He has forgotten more about the census than most of us will

ever know, as well as intergovernmental relations and

cybersecurity.

Ursula Wojciechowski—she is the subcommittee clerk. She formerly worked for Subcommittee Chairman Horn on the Subcommittee on Government Efficiency. For those of you who knew

how many hearings he had, she is probably the most efficient clerk

in the Congress. And John Hambel, on my left, another counsel

who formerly was counsel on the Energy and Commerce Committee

Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, and former counsel

to Representative Norm Lent.

With that, at the risk of dumping everything in his lap just as

soon as he sits down, I will recognize the ranking member, the distinguished gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Clay.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I really look forward to this assignment and look forward to working with you and

the other members on this committee.

I guess I will start with introducing our staff on the minority

staff. That would be, first, David McMillen, the professional staff

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member; also Jean Gosa, assistant clerk of the full committee; and

then Robert Odom from my office who assists us here.

I am looking forward to working with you, and hopefully we will

be able to advance the needs and the causes of this committee forward in a judicious and bipartisan manner.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. I thank the gentleman.

We will now begin with the witnesses. Each has kindly prepared

written testimony which is available for all. As is the routine, we

ask that you summarize these in a 5-minute opening statement to

give us plenty of time for questions. Before we do, as is the practice

of this subcommittee, I would ask our witnesses to stand and raise

their right hands and be sworn in.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. PUTNAM. Note for the record that the witnesses have responded in the affirmative. I will introduce our first witness, Mark

Forman, Associate Director for Information Technology and E-Government for OMB, a position he has held since June 2001. He is

the CIO of the Federal Government and the leading Federal E-government executive responsible for fulfilling the President’s E-government initiatives. He has a tremendous background in the public

and private sector, and will be invaluable to this subcommittee as

we proceed with our work.

With that, Mr. Forman, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENTS OF MARK FORMAN, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET; JOEL C.

WILLEMSSEN, MANAGING DIRECTOR, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFFICE; PATRICIA

MCGINNIS, PRESIDENT AND CEO, THE COUNCIL FOR EXCELLENCE IN GOVERNMENT; AND LEONARD M. POMATA, PRESIDENT, WEBMETHODS GOVERNMENT

Mr. FORMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity and for the gracious rescheduling of the committee.

The answer to the question posed in the title of this hearing, yes,

I think we are headed in the right direction. We welcome your

leadership and the continued opportunity to work with you and the

committee to strengthen IT and E-government.

We find that E-government is increasingly becoming the principal means by which citizens engage with their government. The

September 2002 report from the Pew Foundation found that 71

million Americans have used government Web sites, up from 40

million in March 2000. We know the Council for Excellence has

been instrumental in documenting key elements of that.

The President sees E-government as part of a larger vision for

reforming government. The President’s E-government initiative

through billions of dollars in Federal spending, reduce government’s burden on citizens and businesses, and improve operations

to accelerate government’s response times, often moving from

weeks or months down to minutes or hours. This administration

continues to integrate and align E-government with the President’s

other management initiatives, budget and performance integration,

strategic management of human capital, competitive sourcing and

improved financial performance.

The potential for substantial improvement is greater if all of

these initiatives are pursued concurrently. For the E-government

initiative, the strategic question that we face is how to maximize

the results from the more than $50 billion we invest in IT. Through

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E-government, conducting business with the government becomes

easier, more private and more secure. Achieving our vision of three

clicks to service requires agencies to integrate and to simplify their

operations, while addressing longstanding IT management problems that include redundant buying and IT security.

The administration’s E-government strategy is a two-pronged approach to IT reform: First, modernization within agencies around

the tenets of E-business, and then consolidating and integrating IT

investments across agencies around the needs of citizens. The Federal Government has made significant progress toward becoming a

transformed and more productive E-enterprise. The Presidential Egovernment initiatives consolidate dozens of redundant agency-centered efforts. Twenty-four projects were selected on the basis of the

value that they bring the citizens, while generating cost savings

and improving the effectiveness of government.

These initiatives reflect the administration’s focus on four citizen-centered groups. For individuals, we are creating single-points

of easy access to high quality government services. For businesses,

we are minimizing redundant data collection and using commercial

electronic transaction protocols, while making it easy to find, understand and comply with laws and regulations. For other levels of

government, the Federal Government is making it easier for States

and localities to meet reporting requirements and collaborate,

while promoting performance.

For internal efficiency and effectiveness, the Federal Government

is modernizing internal processes to reduce costs, while facilitating

the ability of government employees to do their job. Significant

progress has already been made on the projects in the past year,

including the launch of numerous government portals. A recent

achievements and next steps are listed in the written testimony,

and the E-Government At A Glance document, which is available

at the Egov.gov Web Site. We also provided the committee with

copies of Table 22–2 from chapter 22 of the analytical prospectus

of the President’s 2004 budget. That summarizes the 24 E-government initiatives, the recent accomplishments, the performance

metrics, and the coming milestones.

Agency IT investments continue to make the Federal Government the largest buyer, as you noted. Table 22–1 from chapter 22

of that prospective document discussed the agency progress on Egovernment. Improvements have been attained through IT management within the agency. Additionally, there are specific agency

initiatives that are highlighted in my written statement. Three

agencies improved their status score on E-government from red to

yellow since the baseline evaluations in September 2001. I would

recognize the Department of Education, Energy and Veterans Affairs for their progress. The National Science Foundation upgraded

their status from yellow to green, and continues to serve as a

model for how small agencies can successfully implement E-government. Seventeen agencies also received green for their progress in

the first quarter of 2003, as listed in my written statement.

Specific actions need to be taken to address the chronic problems.

I listed many on the six chronic problems in my written statement.

Agencies must continue to address these longstanding challenges in

order to deliver measurable results.

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I would like to highlight a few that we are specifically focused

on over the next 12 months. First, agencies are required to take a

comprehensive approach to reform. They have to look at people,

processes and technology, and how that mixes together to deliver

significantly better results. As a result of lack of doing so or lack

of including adequate security, we put 771 projects, $21 billion

worth of requested funding on what we call a list of projects that

are at risk. These projects will be monitored throughout fiscal year

2003 and agencies have demonstrated good progress over the last

month. OMB will allow investments on this list to move forward

only after agencies present successful business cases.

Second, the administration continues to work to ensure that IT

investments reflect consolidation around citizens groups in long

lines of business; that we reduce duplicative collection of data from

citizens, businesses and State and local government; that we leverage enterprise licenses for the Federal Government where appropriate; and that we reduce surplus infrastructure capacity.

Third, a comparison of agency investment requests for 2003 versus what is reported as actual cost provides specific demonstration

that too many IT projects have cost and schedule overruns. Not

surprising, these same projects fail to successfully make the business case and are on the at-risk list. Over the past year, OMB required that all major acquisitions implement an earned value management standard based on a commercial standard. OMB also directed agencies to have a program management plan and qualified

project manager for projects to be approved for spending, beginning

with October of fiscal year 2004 and thereafter.

Fourth, to ensure that IT security weaknesses are appropriately

addressed, OMB requires agencies to develop, implement and

maintain plans of actions and milestones for every program in its

system where an IT security weakness is found.

The need for Federal Government enterprise architecture was

one of the most significant findings from the E-government strategy effort. I discussed the five interrelated reference models in my

written statement. In constructing the 2004 President’s IT budget,

OMB employed a cross-agency approach. This committee has

strongly supported an effective IT management practice, and OMB

pledges the administration’s full support to employ these practices

throughout the government.

There have been many concerns expressed about the funding required to meet the goals and challenges of E-government. The administration has sufficient funding for cross-agency E-government

projects if we simply stop funding what is redundant or not working. In some cases, agency cultures and government organization

structures make it difficult to finance and manage cross-agency

projects. To help overcome this barrier, the President included in

his fiscal year 2004 budget a proposed $45 million for the E-government fund. This seed money for new and innovative projects and

consolidating redundant information technology investments is important. Indeed, as we are successful in using the E-government

fund to integrate redundant systems, we can free up those same

agency resources to be spent on more productive ways to achieve

the missions that appropriated dollars are intended to serve. Thus,

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it remains a key priority for the success of the E-government agenda.

The administration has made major advances in E-government

over the last 2 years. The passage of the E-Government Act has

strengthened the mandate. Mr. Chairman, we look forward to

working with you and your colleagues to achieve these important

goals.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Forman follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much, Mr. Forman.

Our next witness is Joel Willemssen, Managing Director of Information Technology for the U.S. General Accounting Office. In that

position, Mr. Willemssen has overall responsibility for GAO evaluations of IT across the Federal Government. He has been with GAO

for 24 years and has appeared before congressional committees

more than 80 times. You do not look any worse for the wear, Mr.

Willemssen.

Mr. WILLEMSSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PUTNAM. You are recognized for 5 minutes. Thank you for

being here.

Mr. WILLEMSSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting us to

testify today. Ranking Member Clay, Vice Chair Miller, as requested, I will briefly summarize our statement.

As you mentioned earlier, Mr. Chairman, under the project

known as Quicksilver, OMB and the President’s management council have selected a strategic set of initiatives to follow through on

the President’s management agenda. According to OMB, the initiatives were selected on the basis of value to citizens, potential improvement in agency efficiency, and the likelihood of deployment

within 18 to 24 months. The initiatives focus on a wide variety of

services aimed at simplifying and unifying agency work processes,

providing one-stop services to citizens, and enabling information to

be collected once and re-used.

While several of the projects have achieved tangible results, not

all of them are making the same degree of progress. For example,

some have had major management changes that have contributed

to the delays in project milestones. In addition, updated information that we have received from project managers reveal that about

half the initiatives had changes in estimated costs exceeding 30

percent. Fluctuations such as these indicate a need for a strong

oversight to ensure that the larger goal of realizing the full potential of E-government is not jeopardized.

When we previously reviewed project planning documentation for

each of the initiatives, we found indications that important aspects

had not been fully addressed. For example, in reviewing the brief

business cases prepared to justify the selections, we determined

that while all initiatives included a discussion of expected benefits,

and all but one included a discussion of the initiative’s objectives,

only nine of the business cases discussed how customer needs were

to be identified and addressed, and only eight addressed collaboration among agencies.

In addition, in reviewing the initiatives’ work plans and funding

plans, we determined that four of five best practice elements we

identified were addressed in a majority of the project plans. However, only nine identified a strategy for obtaining needed funds.

Further, 10 did not identify a final completion date, and 6 were not

expected to be completed within the 18 to 24 month timeframe established by OMB.

Given these challenges, we have previously recommended to

OMB that it take steps as overseer of the E-government initiatives

to reduce the risk that the projects would not meet their objectives.

Specifically, we recommended that OMB ensure that the managing

partners for the individual initiatives had performed the following

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steps: one, to focus on customers by ensuring that input was solicited from them; two, to work with partner agencies to develop and

document effective collaboration strategies; and three, to provide

OMB with adequate information to monitor cost, schedule and performance.

In following up on our recommendations, we have requested from

OMB updated business cases that were submitted as part of the

fiscal year 2004 budget process. These updated business cases

should provide more recent cost and schedule information, and indications of whether key topics such as collaboration and customer

focus are now being addressed for all initiatives. OMB officials told

us earlier this week that the business cases still, however, need to

be reviewed before they can be released.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes a summary of my statement, and

after the panel is finished, I would be pleased to address any questions that you or the ranking member may have.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Willemssen follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you, sir. I appreciate your being here.

Our next witness is Patricia McGinnis, president and CEO for

the Council of Excellence in Government, a nonprofit organization

working to improve the performance of government and engage

citizens. Promoting E-government is one of its top goals. Ms.

McGinnis testified last year before Congressman Davis’ Technology

and Procurement Policy Subcommittee, back when the name was

still manageable, providing valuable insight on this issue just as

we were marking up the E-government legislation. Her candid

views on the progress and challenges since then I think will be

very beneficial to the subcommittee.

We welcome you. Thank you.

Ms. MCGINNIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Mr.

Clay, and Ms. Miller.

I want to commend you and the entire subcommittee for your

leadership in focusing on this now and continuously to turn the potential and promise of E-government into reality. The role of Congress and your oversight function will be absolutely critical in this

area, not only to hold OMB and the Federal agencies accountable

for results, but also to assess and assure the necessary and flexible

investment of funds to make this happen. It is not just the amount,

but the flexibility, and we will come back to that.

You gave a nice introduction of the Council, so I will not talk so

much about that, but the fact that we chose E-government as a

very high priority a few years ago really reflects our belief that this

provides a way to leap ahead to better services and to connect citizens to government in a powerful way. So it is a two-way communication, in addition to offering information services and transactions.

The E-Government Act, as far as we are concerned, was terrific—

a great framework to move this forward. Certainly not a final step,

but a very good first step, reflecting the principles and recommendations that we have made about the importance of accessibility, ease of use, collaboration, innovation, privacy and security,

and focusing on leadership in this strategic investment capability,

as well as the work force, standards for privacy security and interoperability, and also access to the Internet—because until we have

full access, we really cannot realize the potential of E-government.

There is no question that the public is both interested and engaged in this. This is a way of making government truly of, by and

for the people. Public use of government online has risen steadily

over the past few years, as Mark said, and we well know. We have

done a lot of work over the last few years measuring public opinion

and attitudes, and trying to understand that, trying to bring that

to the attention of decisionmakers. We have a poll underway right

now, one of the series that we have done with Bob Teeter and

Peter Hart, which we will be releasing in the middle of April. I look

forward to giving you those results, because we are focusing on

some very timely and interesting issues related to the satisfaction

that people have with the quality of existing online information

and services; also their concerns about privacy and security, particularly in the context of homeland security; and maybe most important, their sense of future possibilities to organize online interVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:49 Aug 04, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00067 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\86681.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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actions with government in a very integrated and user-friendly way

that goes beyond what is available now.

There will also be an international dimension to this year’s poll.

We are doing public surveys in five other countries, so we will be

able to show some interesting comparisons there; and also surveying Federal, State and local leaders to get their perspective. So I

think this will be very helpful to you and we look forward to sharing it.

The most recent poll that we have made public, I included some

points in the testimony. I know you have had a chance to look at

it, but basically it says that people are going to government Web

sites in much larger numbers. They like what they are seeing.

They expect E-government to have a positive effect on the way government operates. They think a high priority should be homeland

security, health and safety. They are very positive about investing

tax dollars in making government services and information available online. They are concerned about privacy and security, we

know, and those concerns have to be taken seriously.

So to paraphrase the slogan that we hear from the popular music

video channel—I hear my teenagers listening to it—Americans

want their E-gov. So that is clear.

The progress that we have seen in these initiatives, the 24 initiatives that Mark has talked about, I think has been remarkable, despite the issues that have been raised by GAO—and they are all

absolutely correct. There is no difference of opinion there. I know

I, for one, when these 24 initiatives were announced, felt that

maybe they were taking on too much. What I see now is a lot of

progress. It is not even. Everything is not where it should be, but

these clusters of initiatives around individuals, around businesses

and around State and local government, government to government, make a lot of sense to me. Then the infrastructure, looking

at the enterprise architecture is absolutely necessary. So I think we

are in a good spot.

Not to say that we should be complacent. There are issues to talk

about in terms of funding and collaboration and all the issues that

Mr. Willemssen raised. But I just want to congratulate Mark and

the members of those Quicksilver task forces for being very innovative, very flexible, and bringing this a long way in a short time.

The examples—Mark has included some in his testimony—you

can pick out the stars here. Having those successes hopefully will

offer a pattern for the others to follow. FirstGov, for example,

which has improved dramatically since it was first launched, is

now a finalist in the prestigious Innovations in American Government award competition, which we are pleased to partner with

Harvard University on. Not that it cannot be a lot better, and we

all have ideas about that, but it is really state-of-the-art at this

point.

The next steps for the 24 E-gov initiatives still hold the key to

actual meaningful results. We are not there yet, but the public,

businesses and government are clearly benefiting from the early results in the stage we are now. The challenge is to drive the implementation of E-government in a very strategic way down into the

agencies where leaders in agencies would embrace and demand

these tools for their own decisionmaking and day to day manageVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:49 Aug 04, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00068 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\86681.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ment regimen. So it is not just the members of the task forces and

the CIOs and the people who have really signed onto this, but it

becomes a matter of course in the way agencies are led and run.

The focus has to be on the citizens and businesses who are both

the customers and owners of government. I think it is not just customer, it is also owner, and that is really important. Active engagement between government and citizens is essential to getting this

right down the road. I would urge this subcommittee to consider

holding some of your oversight hearings as public forums around

the country, and to use the technology so people can engage in this

discussion not only in person, but online. We have also recommended such public forums to OMB and to GSA, so perhaps

some joint legislative-executive branch forums would make sense.

We would be delighted to help with that.

This phase of E-government has to be focused on breakthrough

performance and tangible results. The measures of performance

should include measurable, tangible items like improvements in

quality and customer satisfaction; improvements in cycle time; cost

reductions; and also the reduction on the burden of customers of

E-government, which can be quantified. In looking at this and

working with the public and private sector, we see four critical success factors for E-government. Sometimes we call them ‘‘E-tensions,’’ and they actually are both, and that is why they are so important.

The first is that greater attention needs to be paid to the governance issues. This is certainly not just about technology. We need

more collaborative models for identifying, funding and managing

cross-agency and intergovernmental initiatives. This is not a natural act, collaboration. Even though we have seen it in these Quicksilver task forces, it needs to be much more widespread, and those

models need to be shared.

Mr. PUTNAM. I hate to interrupt. If you could just run through

the next three and tell us what they are, then we will get back into

that with questions.

Ms. MCGINNIS. The second one is easy because it is very related,

and that is the culture of agencies. The third is the human capital

challenges. We need the right work force. Maybe it is a smaller

work force, but it certainly has to be a work force with the right

tools to do this work. Finally, and maybe most important, is the

need for flexible investment in E-government and the infrastructure required. In that regard, I would like to suggest that the appropriations process, in addition to the way the funding is managed

within the executive branch, does present some impediments here.

It would be wonderful if you, who understand E-government so

well, could hold some joint hearings or have joint sessions with the

Appropriations Committee so that the risk and benefits could be

factored into that process as well.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. McGinnis follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much, Ms. McGinnis.

Mr. Pomata, we appreciate you being here as well. Leonard

Pomata is the president of webMethods Government. He has been

a leader in the IT community for over 35 years, and has a tremendous amount of industry experience, particularly in the area of providing complex computer systems and business solutions to our

Federal Government, and has a wealth of experience and knowledge in this area.

We welcome you and look forward to your comments. You are

recognized for 5 minutes, Mr. Pomata.

Mr. POMATA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. It is an honor to be here before this committee, which

through the work of Chairman Davis and others, and my fellow

panelist Mark Forman have really brought the government into the

21st century. Everybody here is due a debt of gratitude from the

citizens.

Let me state some principles, and I will summarize, that I feel

are important and fundamental to IT programs that are used in

the private sector and really apply to E-government initiatives.

First of all, the driving force—and this has been mentioned by

the other panelists—is the customer. The customer needs to drive

the process and determine what is and when an IT project is necessary and viable. That needs to be kept in mind.

For technology to be successful, well-defined outputs to the customer, whether business or government, is an important first step.

All that matters at the end of the day is, has the customer received

the results in a timely manner and has the project fulfilled the entire needs of the customer. To translate that into the public sector,

agencies should ask if their customers, whether taxpayers directly

or indirectly, are gaining benefit from the project. That is at the

end of the day what needs to be measured.

In business, customers measure performance of IT projects by return on investment or savings. The savings in government need to

be measured in either reduced cost of service or increased service

to their customer, whether that is internal to the government and

government to government, or to the taxpayer. So we must ask how

much value are we adding to their work or to their personal lives.

We need to identify and commit in industry investments to ensure that throughout the intended duration of a project that an IT

project will be successful. All too often, shortfalls in this area lead

to diminished capacity of the organization to deliver, protracted

schedules, and reduced delivery of services. Unfunded mandates

lead to undesired results. It is a fundamental principle in business

to stop underfunded projects before the investment is wasted.

So the question to government is, we know what authority and

direction agencies have been given, but what have they been given

in terms of funding? Fundamental to the success of any project is

a well thought-out plan, and I think we have talked about it before

here, with rigorous milestones and incremental measurable outputs. Modern IT development techniques allow for continuous evolution of capabilities, rather than a single revolutionary delivery.

Project teams need to be fully trained and the approaches need to

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view the team’s progress and have similar measurement methodologies. Among the widely used industry practices is the CMM,

capability maturity model. This is one way for an organization to

measure the development and progress of IT projects.

We also believe strongly in a team. That does not mean just to

share the glory. For instance, in our company we have one mission,

one overall objective, and it is not just an conglomeration of independent operations. Therefore, the question for agencies is also, do

employees and officials see their incentives as just advancing their

own objectives of one fiefdom, or are they committed to the success

of the overall mission?

The function of teams, obviously, is to have individuals and units

coordinate, cooperate and communicate as a team across departments and organizations. A team must have a single objective and

a single leader. Otherwise, there will be redundancy, confusion,

roadblocks and frustration and poor results. It would be a shame

if good intentions are defeated by avoidable lapses in basic communication and organizational leadership.

Today’s citizens, as we talked about, are not satisfied with faxes

and telephones and being on hold. They really want to go to one

screen and have results come up in real time and not have to be

put on hold on the computer as well, and to come back a week from

now to find their results. Therefore, agencies need to ask, when a

taxpayer comes to a portal, for instance, can they get instant comprehensive information or are they still put on hold?

Today for the first time, as you know, information services can

be delivered to anyone, anywhere on the planet at any time. The

Internet and the integration of departments, agencies and information will truly satisfy this global vision. The E-government initiatives will promise to fulfill this vision.

E-government really does not mean just putting a Web front-end

or a portal, but to improve the back-end. It also means reevaluating, if necessary, reengineering the back-end so it makes sense to

deliver value. It also does not mean abandoning legacy systems

that work, but revising these systems and revitalizing them in new

ways by inserting new technology.

It also means instead of continuing to operate in a stovepipe

mentality, simple mapping of logical and efficient overall business

processes can lead to the facilitation and connection of these functions and have a major deliverable result.

In summary, priorities, commitment and leadership remain the

most fundamental ingredients to success or failure.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate being able to testify.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Pomata follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. We appreciate you being here.

As is unfortunately too common in this process, we are going to

have to recess the subcommittee. We will go vote. We have two

votes, a 15 and a 5, so I presume that we are looking at about a

30 minute recess. With that, the committee stands in recess.

[Recess.]

Mr. PUTNAM. I reconvene the subcommittee hearing. We have

completed our votes. We want to thank everyone for their patience

and understanding. It is a heck of a way to run a railroad, but I

guess nobody has come up with a better way yet.

Without objection, all members of the subcommittee will have 5

days to submit statements for the record. Objection? Seeing none,

show it done.

At this time, I would like to recognize our ranking member, Mr.

Clay, for 5 minutes of questioning.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to thank all of the witnesses also for being here

today, and I would like unanimous consent to enter my full opening

statement into the record.

Mr. PUTNAM. Without objection.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, sir.

Let me ask Ms. McGinnis, according to the Department of Commerce report published last month, almost half of the population

still does not use the Internet at all. In addition, for minorities and

people of lower income, public institutions like libraries and community centers are the only source of Internet access. This means

that the government must operate dual systems—one for those who

use the Internet and one for those who do not. In your testimony,

you emphasized the need to redesign systems and take full advantage of these new processes. How does maintaining dual systems

strain the intellectual and financial resources of agencies?

Ms. MCGINNIS. I am not sure I can answer that question in

terms of exactly what the cost would be of meeting the goal of universal access. The E-Government Act did provide for another study

of the digital divide. I think that rather than continuing to study

this, it would make more sense, and perhaps could be done in the

context of that work, to set a goal of universal access, say, within

a certain period of time—5 years, whatever—or just say universal

access. And then ask for an action plan. What would it take to get

us there and how much would it cost?

I think that given what is happening with the technology, the

cost is likely to be much less than we envision now, because there

are lots of ways to access the Internet. Working through libraries

and community centers is one, but we have an explosion of wireless

devices. This is all happening in a way that could lead and should

lead to universal access.

Mr. CLAY. Along those same lines, there also exists a digital divide between urban and rural communities, not much access to the

broad band and Internet use in rural communities. Would you also

include in that study how we access to rural residents?

Ms. MCGINNIS. Absolutely. As that goes forward, I would encourage you, and we certainly will, to pay attention to that study and

see if it cannot be as practical as possible.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you.

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Ms. MCGINNIS. Thank you.

Mr. CLAY. Mr. Forman, the electronic government bill passed by

Congress last year created the Office of Electronic Government. On

the White House Web site this is identified as the Information,

Technology and E-Government Office. There is also an information

policy and technology branch within the Office of Information and

Regulatory Affairs. How will these separate organizations be

staffed, and how will you divide responsibilities between your office

and those of the information policy branch within OIRA?

Mr. FORMAN. John Graham and I have a very close working relationship. The question is one that we are grappling with and are

working as we work through the organization chart. Largely, my

work is staffed by that information technology policy branch. The

person who leads that is a remarkable individual, and the members

of that team are truly remarkable.

When we look at the organization, there are a number of policy

issues. There are a number of technology issues. I have as a political deputy Norm Lorentz, our Chief Technology Officer. What I will

probably do in implementing the E-Government Act is maintain

that breakout between the IT and information policy, versus the

technology era.

The only question, therefore, is whether that IT policy branch

gets re-coined and moved up under me, with a dotted line to John,

or stays with the dotted line to me, and has a direct report to John,

and we are working through that.

Mr. CLAY. Let me also ask you, as this Congress considers reauthorization of the Paperwork Reduction Act, should we clarify the

distinct responsibilities of the Office of Information Regulatory Affairs and the Office of Electronic Government?

Mr. FORMAN. There is an element within the Paperwork Reduction Act that does need clarification because quite frankly this job

did not exist when that act was written.

Mr. CLAY. OK, thank you.

Mr. PUTNAM. I thank the gentleman.

I want to begin with a couple of questions for Ms. McGinnis. Ms.

McGinnis, you mentioned that the E-government Act was the first

step, certainly not the final step. At this point in the game, has

enough time elapsed for you to evaluate any gaps that may exist

in the legislation and opportunities where Congress will need to

step in, need to correct some glitches, or add to?

Ms. MCGINNIS. I think the biggest gap at this point is in funding.

The E-Government Act authorized much more than the Congress

appropriated for fiscal year 2003. I do think that is a gap, because

that management fund is the glue money, if you will. This is not

to say that our investment in IT overall is inadequate. I am not

sure that it is. The problem is that the flexible funding for crossagency and even intergovernmental initiatives is not readily available. So I would say the biggest problem at this point is that.

I do not think that going back to amend or change the E-government legislation at this point really makes sense. I think it is better to do what you are doing in terms of overseeing the implementation and working to identify gaps over time. But this funding

issue I think is significant.

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Mr. PUTNAM. Does anyone else on the panel have a comment on

the status of the legislation?

Mr. WILLEMSSEN. I would just add, Mr. Chairman, I would concur that to the extent that you can allow some time to pass to see

what kind of implementation activities occur as a result of the legislation. I think you in your oversight role are going to be very

well-positioned to see how well that act is going to be implemented.

Mr. PUTNAM. Anyone else?

Mr. FORMAN. I would agree.

Mr. PUTNAM. Is there a mechanism in place for evaluating who

is visiting and utilizing these government Web sites—FirstGov,

Regulation.gov—the range of those that we have been flashing up

on the board. Has an analysis been done of who is utilizing that,

and conversely then, where the gaps are in terms of reaching out

and encouraging customers to use this technology?

Mr. FORMAN. Let me say a couple of things about that. First of

all, under the Federal Government’s policy, we do not use cookies

or anything like that that lasts beyond the session. So for privacy

purposes, we do not track who goes to a Federal Web site and we

would prefer to keep it that way.

That said, there are a number of organizations that track Internet traffic, and they try to see who is coming to, for example,

FirstGov from Yahoo or Google or one of the other search engines.

Those are kind of what people call Web analytics that we use to

improve the quality of the Web sites.

The third thing that we do is focus groups, so that even though

we do not necessarily go out and survey people, there are obviously

some Web sites that do that, most of the big initiatives both across

agency E-gov initiatives or FirstGov and some agency-specific Web

sites have focus groups. They will present to them new initiatives

or new suggestions and test them out. Sometimes these focus

groups are ongoing and they will meet once a month. Sometimes

it is just when there is something significant.

Mr. PUTNAM. Is there a marketing strategy for the Web sites? I

am struck by how outstanding the Kids.gov Web site was. Do we

market it to educators? Do we let teachers know about it? Do we

advertise in Scholastic News or Junior Scholastic or some of the

ways to reach these educators?

Mr. FORMAN. Generally in doing the business case, especially

when they are citizen-facing Web sites, agencies have to not only

say, we will get X amount of users, provide this value to this group,

but they have to identify the critical success factors. Oftentimes,

that is going to be what is generally in industry called a channel

partnership. Well, government is not used to developing delivery

channels. Both in working with State and local government or

going to rap on the Web, so this is a new thing for a lot of organizations. It is one of the taskings that we gave to the Office of Citizen

Services. It underlies a lot of the work at USA Services. But I have

to say this is a learning exercise still for most of the agencies.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Willemssen, I understand that GAO sought updated E-government business cases that are being prepared for the

fiscal year 2004 budget, and that OMB agreed to provide that information after the release of the President’s budget. Have you received that yet?

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Mr. WILLEMSSEN. Not yet. We met with OMB officials on Monday, and they indicated that they wanted to review those business

cases before providing them. They said they would try to do that

quickly. A specific deadline was not provided, but I anticipate that

we will be able to get them fairly soon.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Forman.

Mr. FORMAN. There is certain data in the business cases that we

require which are a little unique to the government—things like

the acquisition strategy. In some initiatives, that is procurementsensitive information or it is protected under other laws. So that

is generally what is being extracted. From our perspective, we told

the agencies, the departments, it is your job to figure out what is

not appropriate to send, but to communicate the business cases.

There are certain things that of course have to be communicated.

Most of the information that GAO highlighted in their report has

nothing to do with anything that is proprietary or should be prohibited—things like performance goals, performance measures, cost

and schedule estimates and so forth. So those should be forthcoming. If there is a hold up, I need to be held accountable. I will track

that down.

Mr. PUTNAM. We will.

Let’s get into some of the numbers. Which of the 24 initiatives

would you classify as being complete or nearly complete, versus

those in progress, versus those that are stagnant or behind schedule? Let’s start with Mr. Forman.

Mr. FORMAN. OK. I would first preference with the notion that

we started out after the E-government task force, and having at

that point 23 and then we added in E-payrolls, the 24th. Then we

went to the managing partner and told them it was their job to

meet with their partners and put together a business case. Here

were the criteria for the business case. The thing that we added

in, versus the standard agency business case, was a requirement

to look at the value proposition for the citizen that was being created. What we got back was pretty bad.

So we had what we call partnership meetings with the managing

partner and the partners. We adopted an iterative approach. The

first iteration was to get up a Web site or a Web tool that showed

that as a team, they could do something that would help citizens,

and it was a visible mark that as a team they could do something

successful.

The second iteration was to get involved in the reengineering.

Sometimes it was identify standards. Most of that will not show up

at a Web site. The third iteration was actually deployment, and the

migration to that reengineered, simplified or consolidated solution.

So what is actually there? What is close to that third iteration?

There are a few that actually are ahead of schedule. For all practical purposes, you can say they are done, but they have such energy now as a team. Those would be, I would say, the recreation

one-stop and the free file.

Mr. PUTNAM. What was the second one you said?

Mr. FORMAN. Recreation one-stop and the IRS free file.

Some have made it through the reengineering or they are heavyduty into the reengineering. They are grappling with, how do we

successfully define a migration plan? But they have not done that.

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we will know they are done per se when we have migrated off of

the siloed agency approach and we have come together around citizen needs.

Some of the ones that I think are on a decent path right now

would be, for example, the E-grants project. E-grants has had some

early—they promulgated the regulation, and like all good government entities, when we have a reengineered business process, it is

not real until it goes out for comment as a regulation, so that is

done. But there are probably 9 to 12 months away from deploying

that reengineered process. E-payroll—the payroll consolidation effort—has pretty much got an agreement and they have locked into

a path for consolidation. Today, they released an RFP for technology. So they are not only ahead of the game, but they are accelerating continually. It is that kind of snowballing effect that I am

looking at. I think those are some of the ones that I would put in

there. I think disaster management is back on track.

Which are the ones that I would say are not firing on all of the

burners that we would like to see them fire? The online access for

the loans, or the E-loans project, took a step back to really flesh

out a business case that was going to be viable. So they are behind,

but they have one of the higher quality business cases right now,

I would say.

The international trade process streamlining, where they have

the Web site out there. In fact, they have their tool out there, and

you were flashing it up. I have trouble finding that tool. I know it

is there just because I know it is there. It is not the quality that

we would like to see. Moreover, it does not have the process

streamlining that we would like to see. The business compliance

one-stop has some pretty neat things there, but that, too, does not

have the quality program management plan that we are looking for

to get into that next reengineering.

So there are a number of these projects that we have had to take

some action, as Mr. Willemssen mentioned—restructure the program, restructure the program office. I think those are known and

highlighted.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Willemssen, do you have anything to add?

Mr. WILLEMSSEN. Yes, we have also identified several success

stories. I think they map to some degree to what Mr. Forman said.

A lot of these ones that have benefits are of an informational nature, where they are providing information to the citizens more

quickly, more easily, and in a much more accessible format.

GovBenefits.gov I think is one. E-training has gotten a lot of participation; also recreation one-stop, which I think also Mr. Forman

talked about.

Now, we should recognize that these informational-type projects

are easier to accomplish. You are putting the information on the

site and people are finding out everything they need to know in one

location. So it is not surprising that maybe some of that low-hanging fruit we are able to capture more quickly.

When you start talking about transactional or transformational

projects, they are going to take a little longer. That is going to be

a little more difficult. Any kind of transactional project, we are

going to obviously have to talk about security and privacy. For

transformation, we will have to discuss the kind of issues that

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Ranking Member Clay talked about before. You cannot just shut

down offices and not provide people with that kind of access, because they may not have Internet access.

So I think there are still some challenges there. I give credit to

Mr. Forman for laying out an ambitious goal of saying we are going

to try to do these in 18 to 24 months. But in some of these projects,

they are probably not going to be able to get 18 or 24 months. An

example would be safe.com, which is interoperable wireless transmissions among our public safety officials. That is going to be very

difficult to achieve. The current timeline I believe they are looking

to do a concept of operations for interoperability later this year.

That is just the concept of operations.

So some of these projects are going to take a little longer. It is

understandable because they are much more than just supplying

information.

Mr. PUTNAM. Any other comments on that?

Ms. MCGINNIS. I think it might be useful to at this point, with

the experience, to map out sort of a schedule that some of these

would be on a faster track than others, so you could see what to

expect. The most important column in their chart to look at all the

initiatives is the next steps. Even in GovBenefits, which I think is

one of the very best, they have not really achieved the result that

they set out to achieve. They have got eligibility information about

200 Federal programs online so that people can find out what they

are likely to be eligible for, but the goal is to both include intergovernmental programs, State and local, and also to allow people to

actually apply online. So just getting a better sense of what that

schedule might look like with this much experience I think would

be helpful to you.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Pomata.

Mr. POMATA. I guess I would agree with that. I also agree that

all of these projects are not equal in terms of what the payoff may

be or the time to do it. Some of the larger projects might even be

the ones that are internal savings and efficiencies—things like Epayroll, E-travel. Those are probably greater payoffs in terms of,

and I have not seen specifically a business case, quite honestly—

but in terms of return on investment, in terms of reduced cost and

higher efficiency, internal to the government to provide service. But

there are probably larger projects and longer-term and a little bit

more complicated that need to be looked at on that basis, but they

do have a payoff. The citizen-facing ones might be a little easier,

but they are not all low-hanging fruit either, so there is some difficulty there. But I think we need to look at them as not all being

equal in the context of how to get these things done.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you.

Mr. Clay.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Willemssen, in your testimony you have listed performance

measures for the Quicksilver project that is taken from the President’s budget. Can you give us an evaluation of the quality of those

measures? For example, many of the projects use an increase in the

number of Web site hits as a measure. Is that a good measure of

how well a Web site is reaching its target audience, or should we

also be looking at the duration of those hits?

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Mr. WILLEMSSEN. I think ideally you would want to initially also

establish a baseline of where the particular initiative is at for hits,

and then what kind of progress you want to make over time. Then,

as you mention, try to become a little more outcome-oriented rather

than just output oriented. To the extent that there can be information garnered about the quality of the interaction that the citizen

had with the site, rather than just ‘‘I hit the site.’’

Now, one method for doing that Mr. Forman touched on was the

concept of focus groups. That can be a useful guide. But to the extent that there is a performance measure that is not only just

quantitative, but you can get some outcome and quality measures

in there too, I think that would be even more ideal.

Mr. CLAY. Although if constituents are not satisfied, we will hear

from them, too, won’t we.

Let me ask you another question. In some of the work GAO did

for the Government Efficiency Subcommittee last year, we discovered that corrections to Social Security records did not always get

made to all relevant systems. For example, an investigation of persons receiving benefits from a veterans hospital turned up a number of active recipients who were listed as deceased on the Social

Security death index. Subsequent investigation showed that the

death index was incorrect and that the errors had been corrected

in other Social Security systems, like the benefits file. Will the Evital performance measure of number of verified death records address this kind of cross-system problem?

Mr. WILLEMSSEN. It can to the extent that the underlying systems and data base structures are addressed. As Mr. Forman

pointed out, one of the objectives here is to try to enter data once,

and then re-use it, rather than entering data multiple times, because in doing that you then increase the potential for just the

kind of issue that you talked about. So to the extent that we can

have a more unified data base structure and a unified set of systems and a defined set of users, you will I think get a much better

handle at addressing those kind of issues that came up previously.

Mr. CLAY. I think Mr. Forman mentioned travel. One of the

Quicksilver projects deals with government travel. In the last Congress, GAO documented serious abuse of government travel cards

for this committee. I do not, however, see anything in the performance measures for this project that would address those abuses. Is

addressing those abuses missing from this project?

Mr. WILLEMSSEN. The information I have on that work that we

have done, is that it has been focused on particular agencies and

the need for enhanced oversight and controls with their existing

systems. As OMB moves forward with this project, they are going

to have to incorporate appropriate controls within it. I do not know

at this point the specific details on the controls planned within that

particular initiative.

Mr. CLAY. Perhaps Mr. Forman, could you address it?

Mr. FORMAN. Yes. Obviously, as I mentioned, things are iterative

here, but clearly one of the things that the E-travel project has to

look at and is looking at for future iteration is this concept of some

people would call it credit card-less travel. We have contracts for

airlines, contracts for cars, and it is not that hard to imagine to a

scenario of contracts for the hotel. At that point, you are left with

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just per diem. So there are a number of ways that we see some of

the largest companies deal with that. They do not literally give a

credit card to a person. The credit card is used for making that

electronic payment and doing the booking, but then you do not

have people doing nefarious things with the credit card.

So there are quite a few restrictions. That is clearly one of the

things that fits within the guidance for agencies to look at. So we

have asked for the E-travel project management office to look at

that as they look at the next iteration of alternatives.

Mr. CLAY. OK.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PUTNAM. Don’t stop now. You are on a roll. [Laughter.]

I want to continue with the line we were on before. In implementing Clinger-Cohen, agencies focused on the development of enterprise technology architectures, which mapped the agency’s current IT architecture to a target IT architecture. The E-Government

Act defines EA’s as modernization blueprints for agency information technology. If you would, please describe how OMB is helping

agencies change those enterprise architectures to support the new

modern blueprint approach.

Mr. FORMAN. I think maybe the best example of this that I saw

when I first came in is we had the Treasury Department brief us—

I was maybe on the job for about 8 weeks—on their enterprise architecture. It was a tremendous set of charts of boxes, wiring diagrams and so forth. But I guess I kind of think of the Treasury Department’s role real simply—accounts payables and accounts receivables. So given how much they spend on IT, I asked, where can

you show me how we are going to improve accounts receivables or

accounts payables? Accounts payables obviously reduce error rates.

Accounts receivable—we ought to be able to account for everything

that we are collecting, and we do not have that accounting yet.

They could not tell me. They flat-out could not tell me how all the

technology was helping with accounts receivables or accounts

payables.

So we are having these discussions now as a result of the E-Government Act and the scorecard with each of the CIOs to focus on

every department’s two or three chronic management issues, that

relates not so much to what computers I am buying, but why am

I buying these computers. The modernization blueprint, as a minimum, every department, every CIO, every deputy secretary ought

to be able to say, I am making this big of an investment in IT to

fix these two or three major problems. And then the folks on the

technology side working with the folks on the operations side ought

to be able to line up and negotiate out those distinguishing investments.

As GAO highlights, that should show up. They should have a

management council, so you know they literally did get the IT folks

and the operational folks together, and they adjudicated that discussion. Those are the types of things that we are starting to see—

the management frameworks, the documentation, the business

cases that back that up. That is what I would be looking for.

Mr. PUTNAM. In creating that scorecard, how do you get accurate

information to sufficiently monitor those 24 initiatives?

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Mr. FORMAN. Each week, we have portfolio managers that work

with each of the projects, and we update status against schedule

milestones. We put at a high level the key migration milestones in

the budget this year so that those would be more public, in large

part because this was something that was highlighted by GAO, but

also to get people to focus now that we are fairly far along in these

initiatives, that we have got a joint solution. It is a joint solution,

and we are going to have to shut off siloed agency approaches and

move to the joint solution.

So I am looking for two things. I am looking first of all for that

E-gov initiative to clearly refine and make progress on their solution, to get to those milestones. And then as we look at the partner

agencies, we are checking the business cases. Literally, we get the

business cases and align those or overlay those against these initiatives to make sure that we are not investing in redundant efforts.

That is the fastest way that we will be piecemealed is if we allow

the agencies to develop competing efforts. So it is a two-part approach—working with the teams to make sure we stay on progress,

overseeing the agencies to make sure they are not off the reservation.

Mr. PUTNAM. In bringing these together, you have technological

obstacles, logistical hurdles, and then you have the people factor,

the cultural hurdles. How well is the culture changing in the Federal Government to make these initiatives work and be successful

in the timelines that you have established?

Mr. FORMAN. Gee, I could use some performance measures for

culture. [Laughter.]

I will tell you, early last summer I took a look at all the efforts

resisting change, and I really think we passed a milestone or we

turned a corner last summer. I am not sure why. Maybe somebody

tried to get me fired and they were not successful or something. I

do not know what the benchmark is. But I could literally place

against the textbook, and the textbook I use for this is called

Evolve—it was Beth Moss Kanter’s, a professor at Harvard Business School. I could look at who was doing what activity to resist

change, and it was textbook. So I have applied a lot of the textbook

techniques to deal with that resistance to change.

Some key lessons learned here, and I think the witnesses have

highlighted many of them. First of all, engaging the President’s

Management Council via an E-government committee was extremely important to us. It worked two ways. One, they became the

focal point for a lot of the issues and the high level of resistance

to change, and we could negotiate that out. By the same token,

they laid out some things that they wanted OMB to do in adjudication as we went through the 2004 budget process that would overcome the resistance to change. So by them saying, for example, just

as GAO had said, you have to have a financing strategy and the

table that lays out all of the puts and takes by agency, what to expect their contribution to be in 2003 and 2004 to these E-government initiatives. They had resisted the financing strategy, but once

we laid it out, they said that agencies would comport to that. So

those were the types of things that we did.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Willemssen do you want to add anything to

these?

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Mr. WILLEMSSEN. To echo that the organizational, cultural and

bureaucratic hurdles that OMB faces in implementing these initiatives should not be underestimated. Every agency ideally likes to

have their own system, because they often like to say, well, you do

not understand, we have unique needs that only this particular

customized system can meet. We hear that all the time. The truth

of the matter is, that is not necessarily the case. In some instances,

it is. In many, it is not. That is why Mr. Forman and OMB, will

be running into a challenge. This is tough work to try to get supporting partners to say, OK, we are going to buy in; we will be a

supporting partner, and we will use what the lead comes up with,

instead of going ahead with our own stovepipe approach and developing our own system for our own parochial needs.

Again, in some cases those are justified. In many cases, I do not

think they are, and that is the biggest hurdle. I do not think the

biggest hurdle is technological. I think it is more management and

organizational, and to overcome that hurdle at the agencies, you

need top executive commitment behind where the executive branch

wants to go with these initiatives.

Mr. PUTNAM. Does that exist?

Mr. WILLEMSSEN. In selected cases, it does. I think it is, as Mark

pointed out, it is improving. But the key as to whether it is really

happening or not is what we see as the year moves on as to whether these agencies are going to continue to get funded for their individual projects and systems, which one logical person may be able

to say, why aren’t you using this other governmentwide approach.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Pomata, what is your private sector take on

our cultural challenges?

Mr. POMATA. I think the commonality is that the private sector

has cultural challenges, too, as well, when change is involved. I

think the common goal approach is important. We institute that in

any change process, and that is there needs to be a leader identified. Everybody has to know who the leader is, and the goal has

to be common, and it needs to be something in the organizational

as well as the individual level to see a line of sight where they can

affect the process. Sometimes that gets lost, certainly down an organization. So individuals, the management team, the individual

contributors—we try to have a situation where everybody can see

their piece of making success of the common goals. That seems to

work, and I think it works in industry, and I have been working

with the government for 35 years of my life, so I see it from both

sides, so to speak, and I think that is something that can be successful as well.

One other comment on a process and uniqueness. I think that

happens in industry as well. When we go into an organization as

an implementer, we use a cots package. Every organization says we

look different, we need to make some changes. I think industry has

figured out that changing the process is easier and less costly than

modifying, customizing and making something unique. I understand the government has constraints that government does not

necessarily have in terms of laws and things, but I think that

needs to be looked at. I think to some extent it already is.

Mr. PUTNAM. Along those lines, a lot of work has gone into determining best practices. In review of those, do you note any major

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differences in best practices between the public sector and the private sector?

Mr. POMATA. I think over the last few years with the ClingerCohen Act and a number things that have happened, I think that

they have begun to converge. I think the government has adopted

the best practices that they found in industry, and I think there

is a cross-pollination, if you will, in looking outside of government

for practices that need to be used, and for the most part and to a

great extent, I think that they have been adopted and are willing

to adopt them. That was the other cultural issue I think we have

had for a long time, is the adoption of best practices that were not

invented here. I think we have gotten for the most part over that.

Mr. PUTNAM. Let me try to bring this in for a landing. I appreciate everyone’s indulgence. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being

the highest or the best, where are we today in the evolution of the

E-government concept? We will start with you, Mr. Pomata. I feel

like we have left you out.

Mr. POMATA. You have put me on the hook immediately.

It depends. I say that not tongue in cheek. Overall, I guess I

would rate it in terms of expectations, and this is not to diminish

expectations, I would rate it in the nine category in the context of

these are major initiatives. They are cultural changes we have

talked about. There are some budget issues. There are a lot of

things that have to be done to move this ball forward. I think all

of us, and certainly speaking for myself, would like to see things

further along, but given the magnitude of the problems, the magnitude of the kind of initiatives that we have in place, I think there

has been significant progress made and significant things accomplished. Hopefully, the next—to get from 9 to 10—does not take 10

more, as we sometimes find in doing things, in terms of completing

projects. I do not think that is the case. So I think we are well

along and it is being well managed. Things need to be improved,

as they always are.

Mr. PUTNAM. Ms. McGinnis.

Ms. MCGINNIS. I would probably go to the other end of the spectrum, because I think we are just beginning here. So I would probably give it a two or a three. But let me say that when we ask the

public to evaluate their experiences online with government, they

give very high marks. But I do not think their expectations are as

high as the potential, and that is why my marks would be lower.

Mr. WILLEMSSEN. I would assess it in two ways—one, direction,

focus; and second, implementation. From my perspective, direction

and focus, I rate it very highly. The IT investments chapter, for example, out of the President’s 2004 budget I thought was a dramatic

improvement, and hit all the right issues. I think within the 24 initiatives there are a lot of good projects that offer a lot of potential,

and I think more can be done. I think it is refreshing to hear that

OMB is willing to challenge the existing model and willing to say,

no, you cannot have that, to certain agencies. So I think overall direction and focus I would rate highly.

Implementation I would have to rate as incomplete. I will be in

a better position to give you a rating on that once I see updated

information from OMB on where those 24 initiatives are in focus

on customers, collaboration strategies, funding strategies, and

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whether individual agencies are going to continue to go forward

with their stovepipe projects.

Mr. FORMAN. In keeping with the tenets of the management

scorecard, I would probably give us a rating on status and a rating

on progress. I would probably give us a yellow on status. We have

made a lot of progress. There are measurable results. But I would

probably give us a green on progress because the plans are clear,

they are all known. There is nothing being hidden I think from

anybody in the agencies, certainly. We were extremely articulate in

the pass-back, the guidance back to the agencies on what they were

going to get and what they were not going to get, and the fact that

this is a team-based initiative and they have to play with that.

That is why they either were or were not going to get funded for

certain things. We have the tools in place, the guidance is out there

in OMB A–11, and fairly far along on the EGO-VAC implementation.

However, how a yellow and green translate into a 1 to 10, I am

not sure.

Mr. PUTNAM. I am not going to let you off that easy. I guess yellow is a five. Is that in the middle?

Mr. FORMAN. Yes, I think that is fair.

Mr. PUTNAM. What does that make a green—a 10?

Mr. FORMAN. I would probably give us a 9 or 10 on progress. I

think what we are looking for on progress is that we are covering

all the right areas, and we have solid plans and evidence that we

are making that progress. I think that is there.

Mr. PUTNAM. What can the taxpayers, the customers hope to accomplish in terms of savings derived from the efficiencies of a fully

implemented E-government strategy in 5 years or a decade? Is

there a ballpark way of quantifying that, to anyone?

Mr. FORMAN. I think that savings is just one aspect. I think productivity is the real key. The question, if you were to take a look

at the discretionary budget or discretionary budget plus some element of the mandatories, and say what portion do we devote to

overhead and management, I would probably apply commercial

benchmarks to that, and say either how much could we do at the

current level in terms of the productivity, the results of those programs, or could we do the same level of performance as we are

doing today at an order of magnitude less cost in certain areas.

The reason that we maintain this has to be looked at from the

management perspective. There are some real pressures over the

timeframe that you are looking at. I would say that probably the

most constraining issue that is going to drive us to really get a lot

of E-government is the human capital issue. There simply are not

going to be enough government workers in the Federal Government

5 or 6 years from now to do business as usual.

Mr. PUTNAM. Anyone else?

Ms. MCGINNIS. I was going to say, rather than giving an overall

figure, I think the only way you can think about this now is to take

specific examples. If you look at, for example, the difference in cost

between even a toll-free telephone call from Social Security and an

online interaction, the multiples are enormous. The potential for

savings here, I think, is absolutely enormous. It will not all mean

less money. It may mean the ability to actually invest in more servVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:49 Aug 04, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00094 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\86681.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ices, better quality services, the kind of work force that you are

talking about. But the potential is extraordinary.

Mr. WILLEMSSEN. I would just echo that. I think it is hard to give

a ballpark figure, but if you look at some of the detail behind the

individual initiatives, I think you can come up with some good

data. One example I would offer is E-payroll. I would expect there

is going to be tremendous savings from going from 22 different

processing centers to 2. In looking at the OMB-reported performance metric on that, I think they are focusing on the right thing—

payroll cost per transaction per employee. That is a good measure

to see what kind of improvement is going to happen when you go

from 22 to 2. The goal is I think to have that done by September

of next year. That is an optimistic goal, but to the extent they can

do it, they should get all the credit in the world for it.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Pomata. Mr. Clay.

I want to thank our distinguished panel for their insight and for

their patience. I want to thank Mr. Clay. I look forward to a number of other productive meetings on this topic. As you know, this

is just the first of many that we will hold on maintaining our focus

on E-government. I really see one of the key missions of the subcommittee being to give good oversight and ensure that the Federal

Government is taking advantage of every technology out there to

increase efficiency and improve customer service and transform

that relationship between the customer and the government.

Today’s hearing certainly made clear we have a lot of work to do,

but that we are also on the right track, and have come a long way.

I thank everyone for their hard work, and with that, the meeting

stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 3:51 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned, to

reconvene at the call of the Chair.]

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