a

GAO

United States General Accounting Office

Report to Congressional Committees

October 2003 ELECTRONIC 

GOVERNMENT

Potential Exists

for Enhancing 

Collaboration on

Four Initiatives

GAO-04-6
All four of the e-government initiatives that GAO reviewed have made 

progress in meeting the objectives and milestones of their early phases (the 

four initiatives, their goals, and the agencies that act as their managing 

partners are shown in the table). Two of the initiatives have established Web 

portals—www.geodata.gov for the Geospatial One-Stop initiative and 

www.BusinessLaw.gov for the Business Gateway. The projects face

additional challenging tasks, such as e-Payroll’s objective of establishing 

governmentwide payroll processing standards and Geospatial One-Stop’s 

goal of compiling a comprehensive inventory of geospatial data holdings. 

All four initiatives have taken steps to promote collaboration with their 

partner agencies, but none has been fully effective in involving all important 

stakeholders. For example, for the e-Payroll initiative, the Office of 

Personnel Management has taken steps to promote close collaboration with 

its four designated e-Payroll providers, but has not addressed the concerns 

of a key stakeholder that will be required to make changes to its payroll 

processes and policies. For Geospatial One-Stop, Interior has established a 

board of directors with broad representation, but has not taken steps to 

ensure that key stakeholders at the state and local levels are involved in the 

initiative. For the Integrated Acquisition Environment initiative, the General 

Services Administration is using a variety of tools to promote collaboration, 

but has not involved partner agencies’ chief financial officers. Finally, for the 

Business Gateway, the Small Business Administration has not taken key 

steps to facilitate effective collaboration with its partners and stakeholders, 

such as establishing a collaborative decision-making process and reaching 

formal agreements on partner roles and responsibilities. All four initiatives 

have faced short time frames to accomplish their major tasks, so that 

competing priorities have sometimes hindered full collaboration. However, 

without effective collaboration on the tasks that remain to be completed, 

these initiatives may be at risk of not fully achieving their objectives or the 

broader goals of the President’s management agenda. 

Four e-Government Initiatives Reviewed 

Initiative Goal Managing partner 

e-Payroll Standardize payroll operations across all federal 

agencies 

Office of Personnel 

Management 

Geospatial One-Stop Coordinate the collection and maintenance of 

geospatial dataa

Department of the 

Interior 

Integrated Acquisition 

Environment 

Improve federal agencies’ acquisition of goods 

and services 

General Services 

Administration 

Business Gateway Reduce the paperwork burden on small 

businesses and help them find, understand, and 

comply with federal, state, and local laws and 

regulations 

Small Business 

Administration 

Source: GAO. 

a Geospatial data are all data associated with geographic locations. 

In accordance with the President’s 

management agenda, the Office of 

Management and Budget has 

sponsored initiatives to promote 

expansion of electronic 

government—the use of 

information technology, 

particularly Web-based Internet 

applications, to enhance 

government services. Each 

initiative demands a high degree of 

collaboration among organizations. 

For four of these initiatives, GAO 

was asked to determine, among 

other things, their implementation 

progress and the extent of 

collaboration among agencies and 

other parties involved. 

To enhance the effectiveness of 

their efforts at collaboration and 

help achieve the initiatives’ goals, 

GAO is making recommendations 

to the managing partners of the 

four initiatives that address the 

specific collaboration issues 

revealed by the review. 

In commenting on a draft of this 

report, all four agencies generally 

agreed with our discussion of the 

collaboration challenges facing egovernment initiatives. In addition, 

each of the agencies provided 

additional information about 

collaboration activities associated 

with their initiatives as well as 

technical comments, which have 

been incorporated into the final 

report where appropriate. 

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-6.

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact Linda Koontz at 

(202) 512-6240 or koontzl@gao.gov. 

Highlights of GAO-04-6, a report to the 

Committee on Government Reform and 

the Subcommittee on Technology, 

Information Policy, Intergovernmental 

Relations and the Census, House of 

Representatives 

October 2003

ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT

Potential Exists for Enhancing 

Collaboration on Four Initiatives 
Page i GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Contents

Letter 1

Results in Brief 2

Background 4

E-Government Initiatives Have Made Progress in Their Initial 

Stages 7

Key Practices Facilitate Interagency Collaboration 18

Initiatives Have Achieved Varying Degrees of Collaboration 21

Conclusions 40

Recommendations for Executive Action 41

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation 41

Appendixes

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology 45

Appendix II: Source Materials for Key Collaboration Practices 47

GAO Reports 47

Federal Agency Studies 47

International, State, and Local Agency Studies 49

Private Sector Studies 50

Tables Table 1: Key Collaboration Practices and Their Major Elements 21

Table 2: e-Payroll Implementation of Key Collaboration 

Practices 22

Table 3: Geospatial One-Stop Implementation of Key Collaboration 

Practices 27

Table 4: Integrated Acquisition Environment Implementation of 

Key Collaboration Practices 32

Table 5: Business Gateway Implementation of Key Collaboration 

Practices 36

Figures Figure 1: OMB Management Structure for e-Government 

Initiatives 6

Figure 2: Partners and Affected Parties for the e-Payroll Initiative 8

Figure 3: Partners and Affected Parties for the Geospatial One-Stop 

Initiative 10

Figure 4: Partners and Affected Parties for the Integrated 

Acquisition Environment Initiative 13

Figure 5: Partners and Affected Parties for the Business Gateway 

Initiative 16
Contents

Page ii GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Abbreviations

CFO Chief Financial Officer

CIO Chief Information Officer

DFAS Defense Finance and Accounting Service

EPA Environmental Protection Agency

FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency 

GIS geographic information systems

GPEA Government Paperwork Elimination Act

GSA General Services Administration

IRS Internal Revenue Service

IT information technology

OMB Office of Management and Budget

OPM Office of Personnel Management

SBA Small Business Administration

VA Department of Veterans Affairs

This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright protection in the 

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other material, permission from the copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to 

reproduce this material separately.
Page 1 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

United States General Accounting Office

Washington, D.C. 20548

A

October 10, 2003 Letr

The Honorable Tom Davis

Chairman, Committee on Government Reform

House of Representatives

The Honorable Adam H. Putnam

Chairman, Subcommittee on Technology,

 Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census 

Committee on Government Reform

House of Representatives

The term “electronic government” (or e-government) refers to the use of 

information technology (IT), particularly Web-based Internet applications, 

to enhance the access to and delivery of government information and 

service to citizens, to business partners, to employees, and among agencies 

at all levels of government. The President has identified the expansion of 

e-government as one of the five priorities of his management agenda; 

accordingly, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has sponsored 

25 initiatives to implement this agenda. This report specifically reviews the 

challenge of achieving effective interorganizational collaboration within 

4 of these 25 OMB-sponsored initiatives: 

• e-Payroll, an initiative to standardize payroll operations across all 

federal agencies;

• Geospatial One-Stop, an initiative to help coordinate the collection and 

maintenance of geospatial data across all levels of government;1

• Integrated Acquisition Environment, an initiative to create electronic 

tools to improve federal agencies’ acquisition of goods and services; and

• Business Gateway, an initiative to reduce the paperwork burden on 

small businesses and help them find, understand, and comply with 

federal, state, and local laws and regulations.

Each of these initiatives demands a high degree of interorganizational 

collaboration. Both e-Payroll and Integrated Acquisition Environment need 

to work with a broad array of federal agencies. Geospatial One-Stop 

1

Geospatial data are any data associated with a geographic location.
Page 2 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

depends on broad state and local government participation, and the 

Business Gateway aims to serve the small business community.

As agreed with your office, our objectives were to review four OMBsponsored e-government initiatives and determine (1) the progress that has 

been made to date in implementing the selected initiatives, (2) the major 

factors that can affect successful collaboration on e-government initiatives,

and (3) the extent to which federal agencies and other entities have been 

collaborating on the selected initiatives. To assess the progress of the 

initiatives and the extent to which agencies were collaborating on them, we

reviewed capital asset plans, communications strategies, and other project 

documentation; conducted interviews with project officials; and assessed 

electronic services made available to customers to date. We identified key 

practices affecting collaboration on e-government initiatives through a 

review of government, academic, and private sector literature on 

interorganizational collaboration. Details on our objectives, scope, and 

methodology are provided in appendix I. Our work was conducted from 

December 2002 to September 2003 in accordance with generally accepted 

government auditing standards.

Results in Brief The four e-government initiatives we reviewed have made progress in 

meeting the objectives and milestones of their early phases. For example,

Web portals were established for two of the initiatives—www.geodata.gov

for the Geospatial One-Stop initiative and www.BusinessLaw.gov for the 

Business Gateway. In addition, the Integrated Acquisition Environment 

initiative established an online capability that federal customers can use to 

access a variety of available interagency contracts. To continue building on 

these early achievements, the projects need to successfully address 

additional challenging tasks, such as those associated with e-Payroll’s 

objective of establishing governmentwide payroll processing standards or 

Geospatial One-Stop’s goal of compiling a comprehensive inventory of 

geospatial data holdings. In July 2003, OMB refocused one initiative, the 

Business Gateway, which had been making slow progress on its previous 

objectives. OMB tied the project’s objectives and milestones more closely 

to the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act’s2

 goal of reducing the burden 

of federal paperwork on small businesses. 

2

Small Business Paperwork Relief Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-198).
Page 3 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Based on a review of government, private sector, and academic research, 

we identified five key broad practices that were found to have a significant 

impact on collaboration across disparate organizations: 

• Establishing a collaborative management structure that provides for 

shared leadership and involvement at all levels and defines roles and 

responsibilities so that each participating organization is accountable 

for the initiative’s success.

• Maintaining collaborative relationships among participants within a 

climate of trust and respect, including mechanisms for feedback and 

debate, based on formal agreements that document a shared vision for 

the project.

• Contributing resources equitably among all participants to reinforce 

the shared commitment to achieving common objectives.

• Facilitating communication and outreach that provide complete and 

timely information for all stakeholders to promote trust and reinforce 

commitment to achieving common objectives.

• Adopting a common set of standards for use by all project partners to 

provide a basis upon which otherwise independent entities can agree to 

share or integrate data or services.

While the four initiatives we reviewed have all taken steps to promote 

collaboration with their partner agencies, none of the initiatives has been 

fully effective in adopting these practices to fully involve important 

stakeholders. For example, for the e-Payroll initiative, the Office of 

Personnel Management (OPM) has taken steps to promote close 

collaboration with its four designated e-Payroll providers, but it has not 

addressed the concerns of one of the key stakeholders that will be required 

to make changes to its payroll processes and policies. For Geospatial OneStop, although Interior has established a board of directors with broad 

representation, it has not taken steps to ensure that a large number of the 

potential stakeholders at the state and local levels are involved in the 

initiative. For the Integrated Acquisition Environment initiative, the 

General Services Administration (GSA) is using a variety of tools to 

promote collaboration, but it has not involved partner agencies’ chief 

financial officers. Finally, for the Business Gateway, the Small Business 

Administration (SBA) has not taken key steps to facilitate effective 

collaboration with its partners and stakeholders, such as establishing a 
Page 4 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

collaborative decision-making process and reaching formal agreements on 

partner roles and responsibilities. All four initiatives have faced short time 

frames to accomplish their major tasks, and they generally have not fully 

adopted these collaboration practices because of other competing 

priorities. However, without effective collaboration on the tasks that 

remain to be completed, these initiatives may be at risk of not fully 

achieving their objectives or the broader goals of the President’s 

management agenda.

We are making recommendations to the managing partner agencies for 

each of the four e-government initiatives to enhance the effectiveness of 

collaboration as a tool to use in achieving their objectives.

We received written comments on a draft of this report from the Director of 

OPM; Interior’s Assistant Secretary, Policy, Management and Budget; and 

SBA’s Program Executive Officer for e-Government. We also recieved oral 

comments from the Administrator of GSA. All four agencies generally 

agreed with our discussion of the collaboration challenges facing egovernment initiatives. In addition, each of the agencies provided 

additional or updated information about collaboration activities associated 

with their initiatives, as well as technical comments, which have been 

incorporated into the final report where appropriate.

Background In the context of electronic government, collaboration can be defined as a 

mutually beneficial and well-defined relationship entered into by two or 

more organizations to achieve common goals. It is an in-depth, managed 

relationship that brings together separate and distinct organizations into a 

new structure. Recent management reform efforts within the federal 

government have focused on collaboration as a way to reduce duplication 

and integrate federal provision of services to the public. Collaboration is a 

key theme of the President’s management agenda, published in 2002, which 

aims at making the federal government more focused on citizens and 

results.

One of the key provisions of the management agenda is the expansion of 

electronic government. To implement this provision, OMB identified and is 

working on projects that address the issue of multiple federal agencies 

performing similar tasks that could be consolidated through e-government 

processes and technology. Specifically, OMB established a team, known as 

the E-Government Task Force, that analyzed the federal bureaucracy and 

identified areas of significant overlap and redundancy in how federal 
Page 5 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

agencies provide services to the public. The task force found that multiple 

agencies were conducting redundant operations within 30 major functions 

and business lines in the executive branch. Further, each line of business 

was being performed by an average of 19 agencies, and each agency was 

involved in an average of 17 business lines. To address these redundancies, 

the task force evaluated potential projects, focusing on collaborative 

opportunities to integrate IT operations and simplify processes within lines 

of business across agencies and around citizen needs. As a result of this 

assessment, the task force identified a set of 25 high-profile initiatives3

 to 

lead the federal government’s drive toward e-government transformation 

and enhanced service delivery through collaboration.

As the lead agency overseeing the management of these initiatives, OMB 

developed a strategy for expanding electronic government, which it 

published in February 2002.4

 In its strategy, OMB established a portfolio 

management structure to help oversee and guide the selected initiatives 

and facilitate a collaborative working environment for each of them. This 

structure includes five portfolios, each with a designated portfolio manager 

reporting directly to OMB’s Associate Director for IT and E-Government. 

The five portfolios are “government to citizen,” “government to business,” 

“government to government,” “internal efficiency and effectiveness,” and 

“cross-cutting.” Each of the 25 initiatives is assigned to one of these 

portfolios, according to the type of results the initiative is intended to 

provide. Further, for each initiative, OMB designated a specific agency to 

be the initiative’s “managing partner,” responsible for leading the initiative, 

and assigned other federal agencies as “partners” in carrying out the 

initiative. Figure 1 provides an overview of the e-government management 

structure established by OMB.

3

The E-Government Task Force originally selected 23 initiatives in September 2001. A 24th, 

e-Payroll, was then added by the President’s Management Council. In 2002, a decision was 

made to separate one initiative into two individual projects, resulting in the current count of 

25 projects. 

4

Office of Management and Budget, E-Government Strategy (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 27, 

2002).
Page 6 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Figure 1: OMB Management Structure for e-Government Initiatives

Note: Initiatives marked by arrows are those reviewed in this report.

Successful implementation of the 25 cross-agency e-government 

initiatives—resulting in reductions in redundancies and overlap of federal 

programs and services—requires effective collaboration. Recognizing that 

collaboration is challenging, the President’s budget for fiscal year 2004 

highlighted the continuing need to establish a collaborative framework for 
Page 7 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

cross-agency e-government initiatives. In November 2002, we reported that

despite the importance placed on collaboration in OMB’s e-government 

strategy, less than half of the initial business cases for the OMB-sponsored 

initiatives addressed a strategy for successfully collaborating with other 

government and nongovernment entities.

5

 Based on these results, we 

recommended that the OMB Director ensure that managing partners of the

25 initiatives work with partner agencies to develop and document their 

collaborative strategies.

E-Government 

Initiatives Have Made 

Progress in Their Initial 

Stages

All four of the e-government initiatives that we reviewed have met 

milestones for the early phases of their planned activities. For example, 

Web portals were established for two of the initiatives—www.geodata.gov

for the Geospatial One-Stop initiative and www.BusinessLaw.gov for the 

Business Gateway. In addition, the Integrated Acquisition Environment 

initiative established an online capability that federal customers can use to 

access a variety of available interagency contracts. However, while the 

projects are continuing to make progress, some of the tasks they face are 

increasingly challenging, such as e-Payroll’s objective of establishing 

governmentwide payroll processing standards or Geospatial One-Stop’s 

goal of compiling a comprehensive inventory of geospatial data holdings. In 

July 2003, OMB refocused one initiative, the Business Gateway, which had 

been making slow progress on its previous objectives. OMB tied the 

project’s objectives and milestones more closely to the Small Business 

Paperwork Relief Act’s goal of reducing the burden of federal paperwork 

on small businesses. 

e-Payroll The goal of the e-Payroll initiative is to substantially improve federal 

payroll operations by standardizing them across all agencies, integrating 

them with other human resource functions, and making them easy to use 

and cost-effective. To achieve this goal, plans are to consolidate the 

operations of 22 existing federal payroll system providers; simplify and 

standardize federal payroll policies and procedures; and better integrate 

payroll, human resources, and finance functions across federal agencies. 

OPM, the managing partner for e-Payroll, chose four agencies to be 

5

U.S. General Accounting Office, Electronic Government: Selection and Implementation of 

the Office of Management and Budget’s 24 Initiatives, GAO-03-229 (Washington, D.C.:

Nov. 22, 2002). 
Page 8 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

providers of payroll services to all 116 executive branch agencies. The four 

selected providers are GSA and the Departments of Defense, Interior, and 

Agriculture. The initiative is divided into two major phases: (1) migrating 

each of the 18 nonselected payroll system providers to one of the four 

selected providers by September 2004 and (2) defining an enterprise 

architecture consistent with the Federal Enterprise Architecture model and 

identifying technology solutions to replace legacy systems. Figure 2 shows 

the partners and affected parties for the e-Payroll initiative.

Figure 2: Partners and Affected Parties for the e-Payroll Initiative

Of the 22 executive branch agencies that currently operate payroll systems, 

6 also provide payroll services to other agencies. The four providers 

selected by OPM—GSA, Defense’s Defense Finance and Accounting 

Service, Interior’s National Business Center, and Agriculture’s National 

Finance Center—handle more than 70 percent of all federal civilian payroll 

processing and accommodating more than 190 different pay plans. 

According to OPM, many of the 22 current providers use custom-built 

systems that have been in operation for many years and need to be 

replaced. Two of the largest providers needing system replacement 

estimated the costs of implementing new systems at $46 to $600 million per 

system. Conversely, OPM estimates that consolidating current federal 

payroll systems would yield savings of approximately $1.1 billion over the 

Source: GAO. 

Migrating payroll providers: 18 federal agencies

Managing partner: OPM

Affected parties: 

94 additional agencies, all federal employees
Page 9 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

next 10 years. These savings would result from reducing operating costs, 

eliminating duplicative systems investments, and simplifying payroll 

processing.

According to OPM project management documents, major phase one 

objectives of the initiative include (1) defining governance for the initiative, 

(2) standardizing payroll policies, (3) establishing an e-Payroll enterprise 

architecture, and (4) overseeing consolidation of agency payroll 

operations. The first major project deliverable—establishing governance—

was completed in June 2002, as scheduled. The providers have been 

selected and a migration schedule established for nonselected agencies. 

However, the other actions have been delayed. Standardization of policies, 

originally scheduled for completion in June 2002, is currently ongoing. The 

enterprise architecture planning task and the initial phase of agency 

consolidations were both scheduled to begin in October 2002 but were not 

initiated until January 2003. According to the project manager, these 

schedule deviations have not led to a significant delay in the overall 

progress of the initiative toward the goal of consolidating the 22 payroll 

providers to 4 by September 2004. However, migrating the operations of the 

18 nonselected providers to the selected providers, which began in 

February 2003, could pose new challenges, because previously unidentified 

discrepancies among agency policies may come to light.

Geospatial One-Stop Geospatial One-Stop is intended to promote coordination of geospatial data 

collection and maintenance across all levels of government. Geospatial 

data—data associated with a geographic location—can be analyzed and 

displayed through geographic information systems (GIS) to aid decision 

makers at all levels of government. For example, the Department of Health 

and Human Services uses GIS technology to analyze data on population 

and topography (including roads, streams, and land elevation) in order to 

track the spread of environmental contamination through a community. 

Using the power of GIS to coordinate and integrate disparate kinds of 

geospatial data can lead to better-informed decisions about public 

investments in infrastructure and services—including national security, law 

enforcement, health care, and the environment—as well as a more effective 

and timely response in emergency situations. The specific objectives of the 

Geospatial One-Stop initiative include (1) deploying an Internet portal for 

one-stop access to geospatial data; (2) developing a set of data standards 

for seven types of geospatial data; (3) creating an inventory of federal data 

holdings; and (4) encouraging greater coordination among federal, state, 
Page 10 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

and local agencies about existing and planned geospatial data collection

projects.

The Department of the Interior is the managing partner agency for the 

initiative. Other federal partners include the Departments of Agriculture, 

Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, and Transportation; the 

Environmental Protection Agency; and the National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration. Stakeholders include nonpartner federal agencies, the 

International City/County Management Association, the Intertribal GIS 

Council, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, the 

National States Geographic Information Council, the National Association 

of Counties, the National League of Cities, and the Western Governors 

Association. Figure 3 shows the partners and affected parties for the 

initiative.

Figure 3: Partners and Affected Parties for the Geospatial One-Stop Initiative

The Geospatial One-Stop initiative has made progress toward achieving its 

four objectives. In June 2003, the first publicly available version of the 

Internet portal was made available online at www.geodata.gov. The portal

is intended to serve as a single access point for users seeking links to 

geospatial data that were previously online but not as easily accessible. The 

portal was originally scheduled to go online in 2004, based on work being 

Source: GAO.

Stakeholders: 

nonpartner federal agencies, city and county managers, 

tribal governments, state CIOs, and state geographic experts

Affected parties: over 3000 

counties, over 18,000 municipalities, and 50 states

Managing partner: Interior
Page 11 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

performed by the Open GIS Consortium.

6 However, OMB accelerated this 

schedule by requiring that the portal be operational by May 2003. In order 

to have a portal operational within this time frame, the board agreed to turn

near-term work over to ESRI, Inc., which developed the portal based on 

modifications to an existing portal it had built for Interior’s Bureau of Land 

Management.

7

 Project officials now plan to make use of the Open GIS 

Consortium’s development work to enhance www.geodata.gov in 2004.

Regarding the second objective—data standards development—project 

officials developed draft versions of each of the planned standards on 

schedule in 2003. In most cases the drafts are simplified version of older 

standards developed by and for federal agency use. The draft standards 

were provided for informal public review and comment on the Geospatial 

One-Stop Web site. By the end of September 2003, project officials had 

submitted these drafts to the American National Standards Institute, where 

formal public review will be conducted and the standards will be finalized. 

Project officials expect the standards to be approved in 2004.

Progress in developing an inventory of federal geospatial data holdings—

Geospatial One-Stop’s third objective—has been limited. OMB Circular 

A-11 required that by the end of February 2003, agencies make accessible 

and searchable for posting on the Internet metadata8

 about all data sets 

with a replacement cost exceeding $1 million. Potential users of geospatial 

data sets need metadata to determine whether the data are useful for their 

purposes and to be aware of any special stipulations about processing and 

interpreting the data. An initial inventory of 256,000 existing federal data 

sets was assembled and made available through the Geospatial One-Stop 

portal when it was implemented in June 2003, and the Geospatial One-Stop 

Web site provides an online tool to assist agencies in documenting their 

geospatial metadata. However, the extent to which agencies have met 

requirements for submitting metadata is unknown. According to the 

6

The Open GIS Consortium, Inc., is an international industry group of 258 companies, 

government agencies, and universities that develop open systems specifications for 

processing geospatial information. 

7

The Bureau of Land Management’s portal, www.geocommunicator.gov, was developed 

using commercial off-the-shelf software provided by the Environmental Systems Research 

Institute, Inc. (ESRI).

8

Metadata are information describing the content, quality, condition, and other 

characteristics of data, such as when they were collected or the coordinate system they are 

based on.
Page 12 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

project’s metadata coordinator, agencies may not be aware of their 

responsibilities for posting metadata about their geospatial submissions. To

address this issue, the project team is planning to take steps to improve 

communication with federal agencies to help ensure that they understand 

their responsibilities for making geospatial data publicly accessible.

To encourage greater coordination among federal, state, and local agencies 

about existing and planned geospatial data collection projects (the 

initiative’s fourth objective), an intergovernmental board of directors was 

established. The purpose of the board is to help ensure collaboration 

among potential stakeholders from all government sectors. In addition, a 

Geospatial One-Stop Web site (www.geo-one-stop.gov) was created to 

provide information about the project, its progress, and its benefits; the 

project’s management staff and executive director provide briefings across 

the country to facilitate coordination with states and localities; and an 

outreach coordinator was appointed to further communication and 

coordination among partners and stakeholders.

Integrated Acquisition 

Environment 

The overall goal of the Integrated Acquisition Environment initiative is to 

create a secure suite of electronic tools to facilitate cost-effective 

acquisition of goods and services by federal agencies, while eliminating 

inefficiencies in the current acquisition process. To meet this goal, plans 

are to (1) consolidate common acquisition functions through a shared 

services environment; (2) leverage existing acquisition capabilities within 

agencies to create a simpler, common, integrated business process for 

buyers and sellers that promotes competition, transparency, and integrity; 

and (3) develop cross-agency standards to eliminate duplication of effort 

and redundancy of data. GSA is the managing partner agency. In addition, 

31 other federal agencies are considered participating partners in the 

initiative. Figure 4 shows the partners and affected parties for this 

initiative.
Page 13 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Figure 4: Partners and Affected Parties for the Integrated Acquisition Environment 

Initiative

Regarding its first objective of consolidating common acquisition functions 

through a shared services environment, the project was generally on 

schedule at the time of our review, although several interim milestones 

were completed later than scheduled. An example of one of the tasks 

within this objective is the development of “eMarketplace,” an online 

capability intended to provide federal customers a single access point to 

interagency contracts and electronic catalogs for goods and services. In 

July 2002 an initial operational directory structure for interagency 

contracts was completed, and in May 2003 the directory was made 

available online for agencies to populate with their contract data. The 

development of the directory structure had been scheduled for December 

2002, but it was delayed because the approval process required to make 

changes to federal acquisition regulations was lengthier than had been 

anticipated.

Overall there have been no significant deviations from the planned 

schedule for tasks within the second objective, leveraging existing agency 

acquisition capabilities to create a common, integrated business process 

for buyers and sellers. For example, the Integrated Acquisition 

Environment’s Business Partner Network, based on the Department of 

Defense’s Central Contractor Registration system, is intended to provide a 

single point of registration, validation, and access for grantees, federal 

entities, and companies seeking to do business with the federal 

government. Since March 2002, the project team has been working to 

develop this network to serve as a single source for vendor data for the 

Source: GAO. 

Affected parties: contractors 

and nonparticipating federal agencies

Managing partner: GSA
Page 14 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

government, to integrate data with other vendor-based systems in the 

government, and to establish a process for verifying vendor information 

with third parties, such as vendors’ Taxpayer Identification Numbers with 

the Internal Revenue Service. In February 2003, as scheduled, the Business 

Partner Network completed the development of an online system that 

allows contractors to enter their representations and certification 

information once for use on all government contracts. Previously, vendors 

were required to submit representations and certification individually for 

each large purchase contract award.

Initial work addressing the project’s third objective—developing crossagency standards to eliminate duplication of effort and redundancy of 

data—was also on schedule at the time of our review. The standards to be 

developed under this objective include data elements, business definitions, 

interfaces, and agency roles and responsibilities regarding government 

acquisition data. These standards are expected to serve as a foundation for 

redesigning the current inefficient process of government-to-government 

transactions by streamlining ordering, billing, and collection and improving 

reconciliation of intragovernmental transactions. Since March 2002, the 

project team has been working on the first task of the standards 

development process—developing a map of current acquisition practices 

and defining future acquisition processes. According to project managers, 

the project team completed this task by the end of September 2003.

The implementation phase for the Integrated Acquisition Environment 

project is scheduled for completion by December 2004. While GSA had 

successfully completed several scheduled milestones at the time of our 

review, other major tasks lie ahead. These tasks include (1) ensuring that 

the online directory of contracts is populated and kept up to date, which 

will require all federal agencies to submit their data into the directory in a 

standardized format; (2) deploying commercial standards to facilitate 

interaction among shared acquisition systems, between shared systems 

and agency systems, and between shared systems and vendor systems; and 

(3) redesigning and deploying government-to-government transactions, 

which calls for standard procedures and common data elements to 

integrate disparate systems and processes across the federal government.
Page 15 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Business Gateway The Business Gateway9

 is a cross-agency, intergovernmental effort to 

create a Web services portal that reduces the burden on small businesses 

by making it easier for them to find, understand, and comply with 

governmental laws and regulations. It is intended to provide small 

businesses with one-stop access to information about federal, state, and 

local laws and regulations and how to comply with them. More specifically, 

the Business Gateway is intended to help businesses find information on 

laws and regulatory requirements, provide assistance through automated 

tools designed to help businesses understand their regulatory obligations, 

and transact business by supporting online permit applications and 

licensing tools. The initiative is focused on four functional areas—

environmental protection, workplace health and safety, employment, and 

taxes—as well as several specific industries, including trucking and mining. 

SBA is the managing partner agency. Other federal partners include the 

Environmental Protection Agency; the Department of Labor and its 

component agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration; 

GSA; the Internal Revenue Service; and the Departments of Transportation, 

Energy, Interior, and Homeland Security. Nonfederal partners include trade 

associations and state chief information officers from Washington, Illinois, 

Georgia, Missouri, Iowa, and New Jersey. Figure 5 shows the partners and 

affected parties for this initiative.

9

Until July 1, 2003, the Business Gateway project was known as Business Compliance OneStop.
Page 16 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Figure 5: Partners and Affected Parties for the Business Gateway Initiative

The initiative was originally planned to be implemented in two separate 

phases. Phase one was to consist of implementing www.BusinessLaw.gov, a

Web portal intended to serve as a single place for finding “plain English” 

legal guides and legal and regulatory information links from all 50 states 

and compliance assistance in 17 areas, such as workplace safety or 

environmental protection. This phase was completed when the portal 

became operational in December 2001. The second phase was to make the 

portal more interactive and broader in focus. More specifically, phase two 

objectives included (1) developing a navigation tool known as a “portal 

maximizer,” intended to enhance access to laws and regulations by helping 

users to quickly find relevant information from large amounts of data; 

(2) offering a range of automated compliance assistance tools for specific 

kinds of regulations, as well as a “profiler”10 to identify applicable tools; and 

(3) prototyping a transaction engine for integrated business registration, 

online licensing, and permitting.

Before the project was refocused in July 2003, SBA had made only limited 

progress toward achieving phase two objectives and was not on track to 

10The profiler is intended to gather information about a user’s business and use the 

information to identify relevant compliance assistance tools and resources. The system uses 

a set of online, standardized questions to prompt users to provide information such as type 

of business, number of employees, location, and whether it is a new or existing business.

Source: GAO. 

Nonfederal partners: 

trade associations and state CIOs

Affected parties: small businesses

Managing partner: SBA
Page 17 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

meet its planned 2003 milestones. A pilot version of the planned portal 

maximizer had been implemented, but only four of the planned automated 

compliance assistance tools had been developed.11 Project plans called for 

up to 30 additional compliance assistance expert tools to be developed 

during the second phase of the project. The profiler was also behind 

schedule, with only mockups of the planned user interface developed. 

Work on three specialized portals for the trucking, food, and chemical 

industries was also behind schedule. The project manager attributed the 

incomplete progress to a funding shortfall within SBA for fiscal year 2003.

On July 1, 2003, OMB announced that it was refocusing the project to 

reduce the paperwork burden on small businesses. The decision was based 

on the findings of an interagency task force created by OMB in response to 

requirements of the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act of 2002. In its 

final report,12 the task force stated that it believed the initiative showed 

promise as a means for achieving the purpose of the Small Business 

Paperwork Relief Act, since it was intended to ultimately provide small 

businesses a single point of entry for regulatory compliance information. 

The refocused project is now aimed at creating a gateway for compliance 

assistance and online transactions that would reduce the paperwork 

burden through integrated electronic forms. One of the stated goals of the 

planned gateway is to increase federal agencies’ compliance with the 

Government Paperwork Elimination Act13 to at least 75 percent by 

September 2004. This was to be achieved by creating, with the help of GSA, 

a central online repository for federal forms and by consolidating 

information collections and forms with similar data elements. Another goal 

is to reduce redundant data and the overall number of federal forms by at 

least 10 percent.

According to several participating agency representatives, it is unclear how 

the change in the project’s focus will affect implementation of the 

previously planned modules, such as the profiler and the compliance tools. 

At the time of our review, no decision had been made about what funding 

11The four tools that were implemented include (1) the Alien Employee Visa Classification 

eTool, (2) the Emergency Evacuation Procedures eTool, (3) the Auto Dismantler & Recycler 

Environmental Audit Advisor, and (4) the Motor Vehicle Waste Disposal Wells Advisor.

12Office of Management and Budget, Final Report of the Small Business Paperwork Relief 

Task Force (Washington, D.C.: June 27, 2003).

13Public Law 105-277, Div. C, tit. XVII.
Page 18 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

or other resources would be made available to continue development 

efforts that had been previously under way as part of phase two of the 

project.

Key Practices 

Facilitate Interagency 

Collaboration 

With the increasing focus on collaboration brought about by the move 

toward e-government, there has been a need to identify key characteristics 

that contribute to the success of cross-organizational collaborative 

e-government projects. Based on a review of government, private sector, 

and academic research and guidance,14 we identified five broad key 

practices that can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of 

collaboration across disparate organizations. These key collaboration 

practices could have a significant impact on whether the 25 OMBsponsored e-government initiatives are successful. Taken as a whole, these 

factors can provide an interorganizational project team with the 

fundamentals for an effective collaborative process.

• Establishing a collaborative management structure. Building a 

collaborative management structure across participating organizations 

is an essential foundation for ensuring effective collaboration. 

According to the literature we reviewed, strong leadership is critical to 

the success of intergovernmental initiatives. Involvement by leaders 

from all levels is important for maintaining commitment and keeping a 

project on track. Defining a comprehensive structure of participants’ 

roles and responsibilities is also a key factor. For example, according to 

a 1998 study by the Intergovernmental Advisory Board,15 a project to 

develop a nationwide law enforcement information system was 

successful due to the establishment of a policy board responsible for 

coordination and partnership within the law enforcement community. 

The board’s members represented law enforcement organizations at all 

levels of government, and the board provided a structure and process to 

ensure a voice for each member of the partnership.

14Appendix II provides a complete list of the collaboration sources that we reviewed for our 

study.

15Intergovernmental Advisory Board (General Services Administration), Foundations for 

Successful Intergovernmental Management: Federal, State and Local Government 

Experiences (October 1998), 54–55.
Page 19 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

• Maintaining collaborative relationships. Once a collaborative 

management structure is in place, well-defined, equitable working 

relationships must be developed and take root in order to ensure 

effective ongoing collaboration. Researchers have found that all the 

partners in a collaborative undertaking need to share a common vision 

and work in a climate of trust and respect in order to elicit full 

participation. An important element of establishing effective 

collaborative relationships is to reach formal agreements with each 

partner organization on a clear purpose, expected outputs, and realistic 

performance measures. For example, in an intergovernmental project 

led by the state of Pennsylvania to enhance its vehicle emissions 

program, a broad coalition of stakeholder groups representing 

government, private businesses, and special interest groups were 

directly involved in selecting a strategy and designing the program. 

According to a GSA study of the project,16 the participants worked well 

together and endorsed the process primarily because all views were 

considered seriously and many suggestions were incorporated. 

• Contributing resources equitably. The responsibility for meeting a 

project’s resource requirements needs to be equitably distributed among 

project participants. In order to facilitate a collaborative environment, 

each participating organization should contribute resources in the form 

of human capital or funding to demonstrate its commitment to the 

success of the project. In addition, formal processes to collect these 

resources from partner agencies—such as written agreements to 

document the resource contributions expected from each partner—are 

useful to support this practice. According to a study performed by the 

Amherst H. Wilder Foundation,17 a collaborative group needs to 

consider the resources of its members. Similarly, partner organizations 

must be prepared to devote substantial staff hours to the collaborative 

effort. 

• Facilitating communication and outreach. Another key element of 

effective collaboration is developing and implementing effective 

communication and outreach mechanisms. Tools that clearly 

communicate the project status and needs among all partners should be 

16Foundations for Successful Intergovernmental Management: Federal, State and Local 

Government Experiences, 21–22. 

17Collaboration: What Makes It Work, Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, second edition (2001), 

27.
Page 20 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

used continuously, targeting all partner organizations and their key 

decision makers. In addition, effective outreach mechanisms are 

important to keep other stakeholders informed who may not be actively 

involved in developing systems or business processes, and an outreach 

plan may be needed to specify tasks and mechanisms to help promote 

interest and participation in the project. For example, while working on 

a collaborative project to reduce highway fatalities, the Department of 

Transportation implemented a knowledge-sharing management portal 

to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas between the Federal 

Highway Administration and the states. This communication tool 

proved to be effective in ensuring widespread and frequent 

communication and was subsequently implemented in other 

transportation communities.18

• Adopting a common set of standards. Developing a common set of 

standards that are agreed to and used by all project partners is a key 

factor for effective collaboration. Such standards provide a basis for 

more seamless systems, data, and business process integration on 

collaborative projects, and help to ensure that those systems and 

processes can work together. Specifically, ensuring that there are 

processes in place by which project partners can select and agree upon 

standards and that all partners are adopting them are key factors in 

establishing these essential common standards. In GSA’s Government 

Without Boundaries program, which provided a virtual pool of 

government information and services, all stakeholders agreed to a 

technical approach for interoperability and implemented a 

demonstration to prove the concept.19

These five key practices and their major elements are summarized in 

table 1. 

18Industry Advisory Council, e-Government Shared Interest Group, Cross-Jurisdictional 

e-Government Implementations (September 2002), 16–17.

19Office of Intergovernmental Solutions, General Services Administration, Government 

Without Boundaries: A Management Approach to Intergovernmental Programs (May 23, 

2002).
Page 21 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Table 1: Key Collaboration Practices and Their Major Elements

Source: GAO.

Initiatives Have 

Achieved Varying 

Degrees of 

Collaboration

The four initiatives we reviewed have all taken steps to promote 

collaboration with their partner agencies. However, none of the initiatives 

has been fully effective in collaborating with important stakeholders. In 

comparing the four initiatives’ ongoing and planned activities with the key 

collaboration practices, we identified significant accomplishments as well 

as shortcomings and potential challenges. For example, regarding two key 

practices (establishing a collaborative management structure and 

contributing resources equitably) we found that three of the four 

initiatives—e-Payroll, Geospatial One-Stop, and Integrated Acquisition 

Environment—had taken actions that met planned objectives or that 

stakeholders found to be effective. However, regarding another key 

practice—facilitating communication and outreach—an equal number 

(Geospatial One-Stop, Integrated Acquisition Environment, and Business 

Gateway) had not taken all the steps they could. The four initiatives have 

all faced short time frames to accomplish their tasks, and they generally 

Key practice Major elements

Establish a collaborative 

management structure

Strong leadership is present among partners.

Involvement of all leadership levels is an instituted practice.

Partner/stakeholder roles and responsibilities are clearly 

defined, agreed to, and understood by participants.

Maintain collaborative 

relationships

A common vision is shared among partners.

A climate of trust and respect is fostered through open 

communication.

Formal agreements with a clear purpose, common 

performance outputs, and realistic performance measures 

are used to provide a firm management foundation.

Contribute resources 

equitably

Formal processes to contribute human capital and funds, 

such as written agreements, ensure that needed resources 

are promised and delivered.

Facilitate communication 

and outreach

Communication strategies facilitate two-way communication 

among the project team, partners, and other stakeholders.

Outreach programs keep those affected by the initiative 

informed of new developments and provide structured means 

for feedback and questions.

Adopt a common set of 

standards

Processes are in place by which partners can discuss, 

develop, and agree to common standards needed for 

initiative success.
Page 22 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

have not fully adopted key collaboration practices because of other 

competing priorities. However, without involving important stakeholders, 

the initiatives increase the risk that they will not fully achieve their 

objectives or the broader goals of the President’s management agenda.

e-Payroll OPM has taken positive steps to facilitate collaboration among the 

e-Payroll initiative’s partners, such as (1) establishing a management 

structure with well-defined partner agency roles and responsibilities and 

(2) including the four provider agencies in its effort to identify a common 

set of payroll standards for the federal government. However, OPM has not 

fully addressed concerns raised as part of the collaborative process, 

including concerns about potential changes to payroll standards that may 

be required for the final migration to the two provider partnerships. 

Interagency collaboration on developing a common set of payroll standards 

is particularly important because federal agencies operate under a variety 

of legislative mandates that have complex requirements for payroll 

processing, all of which must be fully addressed in the new standards. In 

table 2, we provide an overview of the initiative’s implementation of the key 

collaboration practices that we identified earlier, followed by a discussion 

of each of the practices.

Table 2: e-Payroll Implementation of Key Collaboration Practices

Source: GAO.

• Establishing a collaborative management structure. OPM has provided 

guidance to its partner agencies that defines roles and responsibilities 

Key practice e-Payroll implementation

Establishing a collaborative 

management structure

OPM has successfully established a collaborative 

management structure.

Maintaining collaborative 

relationships

OPM is more successful at maintaining collaborative 

relationships with payroll providers than with other 

stakeholders.

Contributing resources equitably OPM has developed a plan to ensure that resources 

are contributed equitably.

Facilitating communication and 

outreach

Payroll providers report that OPM’s efforts at 

communication and outreach have been effective.

Adopting a common set of 

standards

OPM has begun an effort to collect views on common 

standards but faces potential challenges in reaching 

governmentwide agreement.
Page 23 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

and specifies those partners’ responsibilities with respect to their 

collaborative relationships with their payroll customers. For example, in 

memorandums of agreement with the four selected payroll providers, 

OPM defined the structure that would be used to manage the project. 

The management structure includes the four provider agencies, a 

payroll advisory council with 11 representatives from different federal 

agencies, different functional areas (such as human resources, IT, and 

financial management), and OMB. In addition, OPM developed a plan 

that outlines the content of service level agreements between payroll 

providers and their agency clients. According to the plan, such 

agreements should detail both the scope of client services and 

performance expectations for the service provider and should 

specifically address issues such as change management, billing 

procedures, and support services. Officials from the Department of 

Agriculture’s National Finance Center and the Department of the 

Interior’s National Business Center, two of OPM’s four partner agencies, 

cited this project management approach as successful in promoting 

collaboration on the e-Payroll project. 

• Maintaining collaborative relationships. OPM has taken steps to 

develop and maintain collaborative relationships with its partners and 

other federal stakeholders. OPM established a group with 

representatives from the four payroll providers, which holds regular 

meetings to address project status and other initiative issues. Officials 

from three of the four provider agencies told us that this group has been 

very effective in affording them the opportunity to discuss common 

issues and concerns.20 Specifically, Interior’s National Business Center 

representative told us that this forum allowed the federal payroll 

providers to discuss standardizing and implementing two recent 

governmentwide payroll actions—the initiation of flexible spending 

accounts (a program of optional pretax health and dependent care 

savings accounts for federal employees) and a retroactive federal pay 

raise for the first part of 2003—resulting in a consolidated 

governmentwide time frame for the availability of these features.

In order to elicit full participation, all partners in a collaborative 

undertaking need to share a common vision and work in a climate of 

trust and respect. One way to create such an environment is by ensuring 

20The fourth provider, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, did not respond to our 

request for information.
Page 24 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

that all stakeholder concerns are articulated and fully addressed. 

However, according to one stakeholder, OPM has not always effectively 

addressed concerns by agencies being affected by e-Payroll 

consolidation. Specifically, the director of the Payroll/HR Systems 

Service at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) told us that his 

department was not allowed enough time to make a complete 

evaluation of payroll providers before OPM finalized its decision to align 

the department with the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. VA 

had advised OPM in writing that it had concerns that needed to be 

resolved before the selection of a provider was finalized. According to 

VA projections, migrating to the Defense Finance and Accounting 

Service would be both costly and inefficient, because VA would have to 

separate its payroll system from its human resources system. However, 

OPM’s written responses did not directly address VA’s concerns but 

instead emphasized that time available to reconsider the decision was 

short. For example, in a letter dated January 14, 2003, OPM informed VA 

that a business case justifying VA’s position would have to be prepared 

and submitted within 2 days. While OPM exercises the ultimate 

authority in deciding how payroll operations are to be consolidated, it 

could put e-Payroll’s overall schedule at risk by not fully considering and 

responding to stakeholder concerns.

• Contributing resources equitably. OPM has instituted a collaborative 

strategy for financing the e-Payroll project that includes guidance 

identifying the responsibilities of partner and other participating 

agencies for contributing resources for the e-Payroll initiative. For 

example, OPM’s plan for financing the consolidation of payroll service 

providers and the migration of agency payroll operations to designated 

service providers states that the provider agencies are to recover the 

costs of their operations from fees levied on their customers as defined 

in service level agreements. In addition, OPM’s plan relied on OMB to 

apportion funds to the providers for migration expenses by identifying 

agency funding contributions in fiscal years 2003 and 2004. The intent 

was to redirect funding that had been planned for upgrades or other 

payroll system operations and maintenance to support the 

governmentwide effort. In keeping with this intent, officials from 

Energy, Health and Human Services, and the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission reported that they were using funds earmarked for upgrade 

and maintenance of payroll systems to finance migration costs.

• Facilitating communication and outreach. The e-Payroll management 

team has taken steps to facilitate effective communication of project 
Page 25 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

status and needs. For example, OPM began by inventorying 

stakeholders to identify those affected by the initiative and then 

developed a plan for communicating with them. The resulting 

communications plan identified a variety of methods for conveying 

project information to affected parties, including direct meetings, 

workshops, telephone contact, and formal letters to agency heads 

regarding significant decisions relating to the initiative. OPM also held a 

governmentwide forum intended to provide information about e-Payroll 

to agencies and facilitate interaction among the executive branch 

agencies and the selected providers. In addition, three of the four 

designated payroll providers reported that attending the quarterly 

provider conferences and participating in biweekly conference calls 

sponsored by OPM were effective communications mechanisms. 

• Adopting a common set of standards. Consolidating the existing 22 

federal payroll systems into a single system requires that OPM develop a 

common set of payroll standards that will meet the requirements of 

multiple federal agencies with different missions and legislated payroll 

constraints. OPM has taken steps to help ensure that federal agencies 

have input on development of a common set of standards. For example, 

OPM commissioned a study to identify significant differences among the 

payroll processes of the existing 22 providers. Representatives of 

agencies from a cross section of the executive branch, including all four 

of OPM’s partners—the selected payroll providers—participated in the 

study. The resulting 87 payroll standardization opportunities were 

provided to federal agencies for review and comment.21 OPM received 

approximately 250 comments and suggestions for action from federal 

agencies on the standardization opportunities that it identified. These 

agencies’ comments show the complexity of the standardization tasks 

that OPM and its partners have yet to undertake—from proposing new 

legislation to addressing union negotiations. According to OPM officials, 

a focus group was established in July 2003 to further analyze the 

previously identified opportunities and develop recommended 

solutions. Officials told us that standardizing the payroll process is an 

ongoing process and that work to develop a single payroll standard 

would continue with input from other federal agencies.

21Examples of “standardization opportunities” include such things as establishing a standard 

official payday each pay period for the entire federal government and consolidating all 

employees to one biweekly pay cycle.
Page 26 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Although OPM has involved its partners and other federal agencies in 

the process of identifying opportunities for standardization, it still faces 

the challenging task of getting federal agencies to reach agreement on a 

single payroll standard that they all can use. As agencies migrate to 

consolidated payroll providers, changes may need to be made either to 

the providers’ payroll processes and standards—so that the various 

payroll mandates can be accommodated—or to the mandated 

requirements themselves, so that agencies can conform to a single 

standard. Fully identifying and assessing the impact on agencies of 

potential payroll standards will be a challenging effort. For example, 

VA’s Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Finance expressed concern 

that OPM officials might not appreciate the complexities of 

administering payroll systems under Title 38 of the United States 

Code22—the legislation that governs VA’s payroll processes—and that 

changes would be necessary to support VA’s payroll processing once it 

migrates to its new payroll provider. According to an OPM study, in 

addition to Title 38, there at least 13 other sets of legislated federal 

payroll provisions that will need to be reviewed and addressed before 

consolidated federal payroll systems can be implemented.23 Without 

effective interagency collaboration, changes mandated by OPM may not 

fully address agencies’ individual payroll processing requirements, 

increasing the risk that agencies will not be able to migrate as planned 

to their new payroll providers. In commenting on a draft of this report, 

OPM officials stated that they have taken steps to ensure that a 

collaborative process was in place for payroll standards development, 

based on establishing a focus group of cross-agency representatives 

within the Payroll Advisory Council. If supported by a detailed strategy, 

OPM’s action may help to address this issue.

The e-Payroll initiative has achieved initial progress based in part on an 

effective collaborative management structure and collaborative 

relationships with its designated payroll providers. However, the issue 

regarding consideration of VA’s concerns could have an adverse impact on 

the success of the project as migration of agency payroll operations 

progresses. Furthermore, unless OPM places increased emphasis on 

collaboration as governmentwide standards are developed and 

2238 U.S.C., Part V, Chapter 74—Veterans Health Administration—Personnel.

23Office of Personnel Management, e-Payroll Initiative: Plan for Standardization of 

Federal Payroll Policy, Revision 1 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 13, 2003).
Page 27 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

consolidation of payroll systems progresses, it will be at increased risk that 

the consolidated systems will not meet the needs of all federal agencies.

Geospatial One-Stop Ensuring effective collaboration on Geospatial One-Stop is a significant 

challenge. In addition to the eight federal agencies designated as partners, 

the project’s stakeholders include thousands of state and local 

governments, as well as other nonpartner federal agencies. State and local 

agencies perform key functions in collecting and managing geospatial 

data—it is estimated that about 90 percent of geospatial data is collected by 

state and local governments, and that those governments invest over twice 

as much as the federal government to collect and maintain such data. 

Consequently, states’ and localities’ participation in the Geospatial OneStop initiative is critical. Interior has taken steps to include nonfederal 

stakeholders on the project. For example, it established an 

intergovernmental management structure, conducted briefings at meetings 

and conferences across the country to promote stakeholder participation, 

appointed an outreach coordinator to facilitate communication with 

stakeholders, and included states and localities in drafting national 

geospatial data standards. However, given the large number of 

stakeholders, Interior has not yet ensured that many states and localities 

are involved in the project. In addition, although Interior has collaborated 

with its partners and other stakeholders in developing draft geospatial 

standards, it has not taken steps to ensure that those standards will be used 

by a majority of the project’s federal, state, or local stakeholders. Table 3 is 

an overview of the key collaboration practices as implemented by the 

Geospatial One-Stop initiative, followed by further discussion.
Page 28 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Table 3: Geospatial One-Stop Implementation of Key Collaboration Practices

Source: GAO.

• Establishing a collaborative management structure. Geospatial OneStop includes eight federal partners and thousands of other 

stakeholders—over 3,000 counties, over 18,000 municipalities, and the 

50 states, as well as other federal agencies that are not partners on the 

project. To help ensure that nonfederal stakeholders have a voice in the 

direction of the project, Interior established an intergovernmental board 

of directors that votes on significant decisions, such as selection of the 

portal architecture and establishment of project schedule dates. 

Two-thirds of the votes are held by state, local, and tribal 

representatives, and one-third by federal partner agencies. 

Establishment of the board has worked well to facilitate collaborative 

intergovernmental management and oversight of the Geospatial OneStop initiative. For example, at recent board meetings, members 

discussed issues such as the status of the initiative, standards concerns, 

and the management structure of the initiative as reflected in its most 

recent business case. The representative to the board from the National 

States Geographic Information Council told us that state, county, and 

municipal levels of government were well represented and played a

Key practice Geospatial One-Stop implementation

Establishing a collaborative 

management structure

Interior has established a board of directors that 

includes federal and nonfederal stakeholders.

Maintaining collaborative 

relationships

Partners and stakeholders largely have not established 

formal agreements outlining a common vision and roles 

and responsibilities for collaborative relationships.

Contributing resources equitably Although partner agencies initially did not contribute 

funds as projected, they have made planned 

contributions in fiscal year 2003. 

Facilitating communication and 

outreach

Despite a range of outreach efforts, many state and 

local governments are not participating, apparently 

because they do not perceive the benefits to outweigh 

the effort and expense of doing so.

Adopting a common set of 

standards

Participation in drafting standards has been limited, 

with many states and almost all counties and cities not 

participating. Further, achieving consistent 

implementation of the standards across levels of 

government will be challenging.
Page 29 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

useful role in providing alternative views about the direction of the 

initiative.24

• Maintaining collaborative relationships. While Geospatial One-Stop 

has established a management structure to facilitate collaboration, it 

has made less progress in defining working relationships among its 

collaborative partners. One positive step was the development of a 

charter for the project’s board of directors, which discusses authority,

responsibilities, voting procedures, and coordinating mechanisms for 

the board members. The charter was signed by each of the board’s 

members. However, at the time of our review, other than this charter, 

only one memorandum of understanding had been established regarding 

collaborative relationships—an agreement on coordinating GIS 

standards related to homeland security, which was signed by the 

Federal Geographic Data Committee, the U.S. Geological Survey, and

the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. Without formal agreements 

among the Geospatial One-Stop project partners, it may be difficult to

sustain a shared vision for the project and ensure that progress is being 

made toward achieving its objectives.

• Contributing resources equitably. While Geospatial One-Stop initially 

had difficulty obtaining resource contributions from federal partner 

agencies, these early problems have largely been resolved. According to 

the executive director, partner agencies did not contribute funds for 

fiscal year 2002 as had been projected in the project’s capital asset plan, 

even though the agencies had been involved in preparing the plan.

Instead, Interior provided all fiscal year 2002 funds for the project. For 

fiscal year 2003, the capital asset plan estimated that Interior would 

contribute about $2.2 million, while the other seven partner agencies 

would contribute the remaining $6.2 million. According to a project 

official, all agencies have made their planned contributions. The 

availability of funds from partner agencies in fiscal year 2003 has 

allowed Geospatial One-Stop to complete several tasks on schedule,

such as deploying the initial version of the www.geodata.gov portal and 

submitting draft national geospatial data standards to the American 

National Standards Institute.

24The National States Geographic Information Council is an organization of states that 

promotes the adoption and use of geographic information technologies. Members include 

state GIS coordinators, senior state GIS managers, and representatives from federal 

agencies, local government, the private sector, academia, and other professional 

organizations.
Page 30 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

• Facilitating communication and outreach. The Geospatial One-Stop

project team uses a number of different mechanisms to communicate 

information about the project to potential stakeholders and the public. 

For example, the project management team established a Web site that 

provides information such as minutes of the board of directors 

meetings, links to partners’ and other stakeholders’ Web sites, 

geospatial data standards, and the most recent Geospatial One-Stop

business case. The executive director and other Geospatial One-Stop

project members also provide briefings and question-and-answer 

sessions at conferences and participate in other forums to provide 

information about the project to other stakeholders. The project’s 

executive director attended the midyear meeting of the National States 

Geographic Information Council, where he provided a briefing and a 

luncheon talk about Geospatial One-Stop to all attendees and addressed

the attendees’ questions and concerns. In addition, the initiative’s

project team, in conjunction with the National Association of Counties, 

the National League of Cities, and the International City/County 

Managers Association, conducted a survey of local governments to

gather information about the extent of respondents’ use of geospatial 

data and the reasons why such data are not being used more extensively 

by those governments.

Despite these measures, according to state GIS officials the project has 

not yet gained participation from other governments because they may 

not perceive it to be beneficial to undertake the effort and expense of 

documenting and making available local geospatial data for inclusion in 

the www.geodata.gov portal. For example, the executive director of 

Vermont’s Center for Geographic Information, Inc., told us that he did 

not know whether Vermont’s geospatial data holdings were being 

considered for inclusion in Geospatial One-Stop and that the benefits of 

participation had not been well communicated. In addition, Montana’s 

GIS coordinator told us that Montana had not yet committed to 

participate in the project and that state government officials did not 

understand the benefits of participating. According to the Geospatial 

One-Stop Capital Asset Plan, Interior is planning to provide incentives 

for state, local, and tribal governments to participate, although the 

project’s executive director told us that carrying out these plans is 

contingent on approval of funding. Also, in a draft of Interior’s fiscal 

year 2005 plan, several planned actions to accomplish these tasks have 

been identified. Planned actions include providing funding to help state, 

local, and tribal organizations to become more engaged in 

intergovernmental geospatial activities and establishing a liaison 
Page 31 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

program with funding to local stakeholder associations to work with 

Geospatial One-Stop and serve as a liaison between federal agencies and 

those associations. In addition, according to the Geospatial One-Stop 

outreach coordinator, other efforts not provided in the initiative’s capital 

asset plans include identifying opportunities to promote geospatial 

information as part of the state and local government policy efforts and 

enhance outreach in other areas of the project, such as standards 

development and management of the portal. However, there are no 

plans to develop a formal outreach plan for the Geospatial One-Stop 

initiative. Unless a detailed plan is documented and implemented for 

conducting effective outreach, state and local geospatial information 

may remain inaccessible through the Geospatial One-Stop portal, 

significantly reducing the usefulness of the portal as a central access 

point for such data.

• Adopting a common set of standards. Interior has taken steps to 

collaboratively develop a set of basic standards to support the collection 

of interoperable geospatial data for the Geospatial One-Stop initiative. 

Specifically, project participants have drafted standards for seven types 

of data25 as well as a base standard, with participants from other federal 

agencies, states, localities, the private sector, and academia 

participating in their development. However, participation in the 

standards-setting process has been limited. Several large nonpartner 

federal agencies—such as the Departments of Treasury, Justice, and 

Health and Human Services—were not represented on the standards 

development effort. In addition, local government representation 

included only 23 counties and 3 cities. As a result, the risk is substantial 

that many federal and local stakeholders may not adopt the proposed 

standards because those standards may not meet their needs.

Further, definition of the standards is only the first step in realizing their 

benefits; Geospatial One-Stop has not addressed the challenge of 

gaining consistent implementation of the standards across 

governments—a key factor in effective collaboration. Many states and 

localities have already established Web sites that provide a variety of 

location-related information services, such as updated traffic and 

25The seven types are transportation, hydrography, government units, geodetic control 

(supporting a common coordinate system), elevation, digital orthoimagery (having the 

characteristics of a map and the image of a photograph), and cadastral (relating to land 

ownership).
Page 32 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

transportation information, land ownership and tax records, and 

information on housing for the elderly, using existing commercial 

products that are already meeting their needs. Hence these 

organizations are likely to have little incentive to adopt potentially 

incompatible standards that could require substantial new investments. 

According to Arizona’s state cartographer, many local governments 

currently do not comply with existing federal standards because most of 

their GIS applications were created primarily to meet their internal 

needs, with little concern for data sharing with federal systems. If 

designated standards are not widely adopted, geospatial data could 

continue to be collected in incompatible formats and systems, 

preventing officials from gaining the benefits of better-informed 

decisions about public investments in infrastructure and services based 

on an integrated view of geospatial information.

While the Geospatial One-Stop project established a significant 

collaborative management structure in its broadly representative board of 

directors, the project has not fully adopted other key collaborative 

practices. It faces significant challenges in obtaining participation from 

thousands of potential project stakeholders and obtaining their agreement 

on and implementation of geospatial data standards. Such participation 

will be difficult to achieve without a more structured and rigorous outreach 

effort to involve federal, state, and local government agencies.

Integrated Acquisition 

Environment

The General Services Administration has taken steps to ensure that a 

variety of mechanisms are in place to facilitate collaboration on the 

Integrated Acquisition Environment initiative. For example, the project 

team developed a formal charter outlining the objectives, tasks, and roles 

and responsibilities of project partners, and it is in the process of 

completing implementation of memorandums of agreement with all 

participating agencies to further define their roles and financial 

responsibilities. In addition, GSA has developed a communication strategy 

for the initiative to help ensure that partners and stakeholders are 

informed. However, that strategy does not include key financial decision 

makers throughout the government, although our research shows that such 

officials should be informed of project status and needs on a continuous 

basis. Finally, GSA’s plans for developing standards for the federal 

acquisitions process are in line with the key practices that we identified. 

Table 4 provides an overview of the initiative’s collaboration practices, 

followed by further discussion.
Page 33 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Table 4: Integrated Acquisition Environment Implementation of Key Collaboration 

Practices

Source: GAO.

• Establishing a collaborative management structure. The project team 

established a charter for the Integrated Acquisition Environment 

initiative that all partners and stakeholders agreed to during the initial 

phase of the project. According to the project manager, the interagency 

development of and agreement to the initiative’s charter allowed the 

project team to collectively establish a common foundation for working 

collaboratively on the initiative. In addition, the project management 

team established a structure of subteams responsible for leading 

development within each of five project modules defined in the charter. 

The subteams consist of representatives from at least 22 agencies who 

are tasked with serving as the primary liaisons between their agencies 

and the project management team. This well-defined subteam structure 

can contribute to effective collaboration at the working level among the 

many agencies involved in the project. Further, GSA is in the process of 

developing a comprehensive change management plan to be completed 

in early 2004. This plan is to address stakeholder involvement through 

the use of multi-agency, cross-functional teams at the executive level 

Key practice

Integrated Acquisition Environment 

implementation

Establishing a collaborative 

management structure

Interagency development of a charter established a 

common foundation for collaboration, and the use of 

subteams to develop project modules facilitates 

collaboration at the working level.

Maintaining collaborative 

relationships

Effective collaboration mechanisms have been 

established, including memorandums of agreement 

that define partners’ roles and funding contributions, as 

well as regular weekly meetings of business area 

teams and project managers. 

Contributing resources equitably GSA has been successful in obtaining allotted resource 

contributions from most of its participating partner 

agencies.

Facilitating communication and 

outreach

A detailed communication plan and a range of outreach 

efforts have been effective at promoting collaboration, 

but key financial decision makers—the Chief Financial 

Officers—have not been included. 

Adopting a common set of 

standards

The project team is planning to use commercial 

standards to develop proposed standard interfaces and 

to distribute them to the federal procurement 

community for comment. 
Page 34 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

and collaborative design of the system through business area teams 

populated with partner agency representatives.

• Maintaining collaborative relationships. The project management 

team is in the process of establishing memorandums of agreement with 

each partner agency; these agreements further define each partner’s role 

and expected funding contributions. As of September 2003, 

memorandums of agreement had been signed with 21 agencies, 3 were 

near completion, and 7 remained to be completed. In addition, GSA 

officials reported that several collaborative forums for Integrated 

Acquisition Environment stakeholders were in place. For example, 

business area teams and project managers hold regular weekly 

meetings, which serve to reinforce collaborative relationships that cut 

across organizational boundaries. In addition, an Industry Advisory 

Board provides industry perspectives on priority needs, requirements, 

best practices, and trends. Officials from 10 partner and stakeholder 

agencies that we contacted indicated that the project’s collaboration 

mechanisms were effective.

• Contributing resources equitably. To date, the project has been 

successful in obtaining resource contributions from most of its partner 

agencies. According to GSA officials, as of September 2003, 94 percent 

of requested funds had been received. According to the project 

managers, GSA anticipates that all participating partner agencies will 

contribute their allotted amounts in fiscal year 2004.

• Facilitating communication and outreach. The Integrated Acquisition 

Environment’s project team has taken a number of concrete steps to 

build communication and outreach among partners and stakeholders. 

For instance, the team has developed a detailed communication plan 

that clearly identifies their audience, as well as various communication 

tactics, such as creating e-mail news updates, participating in “industry 

days,” meeting with agencies’ senior officials, and contributing content 

to the press. Project officials also established an online workspace 

where participants can share information, organize conferences to share 

information with private industry, and hold regular team meetings. 

According to comments from several participants and interested parties, 

these strategies are effective in providing necessary information 

regarding the initiative. Interior’s deputy assistant secretary for 

performance and management, for example, noted that these measures 

have been effective at promoting collaboration by focusing on sharing 

information and generating agency support for the initiative.
Page 35 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

However, the project team has not included all stakeholders that it could 

in its communication and outreach efforts. Specifically, Chief Financial 

Officers (CFO) of partner and stakeholder agencies, who make key 

decisions about financial contributions to the initiative, said they had 

not been included and consequently have not been kept up to date about 

the objectives and requirements of the initiative. Representatives of the 

partner agency CFOs provided suggestions that highlighted 

shortcomings in GSA’s communications with the financial community to 

date. For example, Treasury’s CFO noted that the specific objectives of 

the initiative should be communicated to senior financial managers so 

that they understand how the initiative will support the missions of their 

organizations. According to the assistant CFO for the Department of 

Housing and Urban Development, the project team could more 

effectively reach the financial community by interacting regularly with 

the federal CFO Council, a mechanism established as a focal point for 

financial management issues in the federal government. According to 

the Integrated Acquisition Environment’s project managers, increased 

support from the CFOs could increase the likelihood of partner agencies 

contributing funds to the initiative. These officials told us that they are 

working to better include financial decision makers in future project 

communications by updating the project’s communication plan to 

include agencies’ CFOs and coordinating more actively with the CFO 

council as new project modules are developed. In commenting on a 

draft of this report, GSA officials stated that GSA has scheduled 

discussions about the initiative with a cross section of CFOs and plans 

to invite a representative of the CFO Council to participate in the 

Integrated Acquisition Environment governance body. However, at the 

time of our review, these actions had not yet been completed. Without 

taking such an inclusive approach, the project could be at greater risk of 

not meeting its objectives due to future funding shortfalls.

• Adopting a common set of standards. The lack of standardization in 

government-to-government transactions adds to the complexity and 

inefficiency of the current process. A primary objective of the Integrated 

Acquisition Environment initiative is to establish standard data 

elements, business definitions, interfaces, and roles and responsibilities 

for government acquisitions. Achieving this objective is likely to be 

challenging. Once agreed upon, the new standards are expected to 

streamline the data handling processes, reduce workload, improve 

billing accuracy, and help enforce data stewardship roles and 

responsibilities. The project team’s standards development strategy 

includes obtaining comments from as many affected federal agencies as 
Page 36 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

possible, which is in line with the key collaboration practices that we 

identified. Having begun by mapping the process currently in place, the 

project team intends in October 2003 to begin using commercial 

standards to develop proposed standard interfaces. As proposed 

standards are developed, the project team plans to distribute them to all 

members of the federal procurement community—128 agencies—for 

comment. The process of addressing these comments and reaching final 

agreement on standards is likely to be challenging, given the number of 

affected agencies.

GSA has adopted a variety of effective collaborative practices that have 

contributed to progress in advancing the goals of the project. Like the other 

initiatives, Integrated Acquisition Environment still faces additional 

challenging tasks, especially in setting standards. Involving agency 

financial decision makers could help reduce the risk that agencies may not 

contribute resources in future years.

Business Gateway Collaboration on the Business Gateway project is critical at two broad 

levels. First, several key federal agencies that are responsible for business 

regulation—such as the Departments of Labor and Transportation and the 

Environmental Protection Agency—must collaborate to make it easier for 

businesses to access and comply with their regulations. Second, the 

Business Gateway project team must collaborate with industry-specific 

groups that are the subject of business regulation—such as truckers and 

miners—to ensure that the planned gateway will meet their needs. In 

specific areas, such as development of the gateway’s profiler module, 

collaboration has been successful. However, on the whole, SBA’s actions to 

involve its partners and other stakeholders in the Business Gateway 

initiative have not addressed many of the areas that we found to be 

essential to achieving effective collaboration. SBA has not yet taken steps 

to document project responsibilities in interagency agreements, achieve 

equitable resource contributions among partners, or provide adequate 

outreach to partners and potential stakeholders to ensure that they are 

kept fully informed about the project. Table 5 is an overview of the key 

collaboration practices as implemented by the Business Gateway initiative, 

followed by further discussion.
Page 37 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Table 5: Business Gateway Implementation of Key Collaboration Practices

Source: GAO.

• Establishing a collaborative management structure. To facilitate 

collaboration on the Business Gateway initiative, SBA developed a 

project charter that addresses the goals of the initiative, its benefits, 

project components, and critical success factors. However, the charter 

does not define an interagency approach to managing the initiative, 

discuss participants’ roles and responsibilities, or establish 

collaborative decision-making processes. According to the Internal 

Revenue Service’s (IRS) representative to the project, the charter 

contains no specific assignment of responsibilities—it was developed 

only to document general support for the concept of the initiative. 

Without a well-defined decision-making process, including specified 

roles and responsibilities, designated partner agencies may be unwilling 

to make significant commitments to supporting the goals and objectives 

of the initiative.

• Maintaining collaborative relationships. SBA has not yet established 

mechanisms to maintain effective relationships with its agency partners 

or other stakeholders. Although it reached agreements in 2002 with four 

of its nine federal partner agencies, those agreements specified single, 

limited-scope project tasks rather than establishing working 

relationships with a common vision for the initiative. For example, 

Key practice Business Gateway implementation

Establishing a collaborative 

management structure

A project charter has been developed, but it does not 

define roles or responsibilities or establish collaborative 

decision-making processes. 

Maintaining collaborative 

relationships

Mechanisms have not yet been established to maintain 

collaborative working relationships among partners and 

stakeholders.

Contributing resources equitably Rather than having partners contribute resources, SBA 

is both funding the initiative and controlling decision 

making, which does not encourage participation and 

collaboration.

Facilitating communication and 

outreach

Although subgroups have displayed effective 

communication practices, projectwide communication 

and outreach have been limited, resulting in key 

decision makers not being involved.

Adopting a common set of 

standards

The initiative has agreed on common standards, 

adopting existing data and technical standards where 

available and developing ad hoc standards when 

needed. 
Page 38 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

SBA’s memorandum of understanding with IRS was to develop a pilot 

program under which small businesses could apply for Federal 

Employer Identification Numbers via the Internet rather than by mail or 

fax. Similarly, SBA’s agreement with the Occupational Safety and Health 

Administration was to develop a tool to help small businesses comply 

with emergency standards. Further, SBA has not yet established formal 

agreements with organizations that represent small businesses, such as 

the American Trucking Association, the Owner-Operator Independent 

Drivers Association, or the National Private Truck Council—all of whom 

represent the ultimate intended beneficiaries of the initiative’s services. 

According to the OMB portfolio manager for government-to-business 

initiatives, the project has not been able to establish formal 

collaboration agreements because key management components, such 

as partner agency roles and responsibilities, have not yet been defined. 

Without well-defined mechanisms for collaboration, the project risks 

not meeting the needs of partner agencies or gaining their commitment 

to continue supporting the project.

• Contributing resources equitably. SBA also has not developed a 

strategy for sharing resource commitments across its partner agencies. 

On the contrary, the project manager’s strategy has relied solely on SBA 

to fund the initiative. According to the OMB government-to-business 

portfolio manager, SBA’s strategy was to promote collaboration by not 

burdening potential partners with financial responsibilities for the 

initiative. However, in taking on all financial responsibility, SBA also 

took control of decision-making responsibility, which reduced agency 

collaboration. Officials from designated partner agencies told us that 

because they did not provide funds for the initiative, they have had little 

input in the decision-making process and, as a result, do not have a 

strong incentive to participate in the Business Gateway. Without the 

involvement of partner agencies, the initiative risks not being able to 

achieve its broader objective of providing small businesses with a single 

integrated source for compliance with federal regulations.

• Facilitating communication and outreach. The Business Gateway 

initiative has produced examples of effective communication and 

outreach. For example, SBA designated the Environmental Protection 

Agency (EPA) to take the lead in developing the profiler, which is 

intended to gather information about a user’s business (such as type of 

business, number of employees, and so on) to aid in providing focused 

assistance. Based on comments from participating agency 

representatives, EPA has been effective at leading communication and 
Page 39 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

outreach for that task. EPA established a cross-agency workgroup that 

meets weekly to discuss progress, make decisions, and address the next 

steps with regard to development of the module. The profiler module 

workgroup members also routinely coordinate via e-mail and telephone, 

and EPA communicates updated information on development of the 

profiler module at projectwide team meetings. Participants in the 

workgroup told us they found that these meetings and briefings by EPA 

were an effective means for collaboration. For example, according to 

the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s representative on 

the profiler workgroup, EPA did an excellent job of facilitating 

consensus as to next steps, specifying what tasks were to be done by 

participants, following up on performance, and relaying information or 

requests from SBA.

However, despite subgroup examples such as this, communication and 

outreach by SBA to partners and stakeholders projectwide remain 

limited, with key decision makers not having access to up-to-date 

information about the initiative. For example, according to the trucking 

module leader, key agency decision makers were not involved in 

meetings, conference calls, and monthly workgroup meetings, and 

therefore agency participants were limited in their ability to support the 

initiative because they could not make resource commitments. More 

specifically, federal agency decision makers were often not present at 

meetings where decisions, such as those on the costs and schedule, 

were made for the initiative. As a result, project issues could not be 

effectively discussed and resolved, slowing progress and hindering 

collaboration.

• Adopting a common set of standards. The Business Gateway project 

team has adopted existing data and technical standards when they were 

available. For example, the team examined the technical reference 

model associated with the OMB-sponsored Federal Enterprise 

Architecture to identify relevant standards and ensure that technical 

elements of the gateway were compatible with the Federal Enterprise 

Architecture. In cases where standards were not previously defined, the 

project team either reached agreement or began a process to reach 

agreement on ad hoc standards. For example, EPA and the Department 

of Energy agreed to use the same set of basic key words to direct 

inquiries by users on topics related to environmental protection 

regulations. These practices are in line with key practices that we 

identified for adopting common sets of standards.
Page 40 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

The collaboration challenges faced by the Business Gateway project may 

have contributed to the slow progress on recent work. Specifically, the lack

of well-defined roles and responsibilities may have inhibited the 

stakeholder participation necessary to complete tasks on schedule. The 

lack of shared responsibility for funding the project may have also limited

stakeholder commitment. In addition, limited communication and outreach

left key partners and stakeholders ill-informed about the initiative’s

progress and development issues.

Conclusions Each of the four e-government initiatives has made progress toward 

achieving its overall objectives. A number of early goals have been 

achieved, including establishing Web portals such as www.geodata.gov for 

the Geospatial One-Stop initiative and www.BusinessLaw.gov for the 

Business Gateway project. All four initiatives rely on cross-agency 

collaboration, and they still have a number of tasks to complete, some of 

which require extensive interorganizational cooperation and could be very 

challenging.

In our assessment of previous research into cross-organizational 

collaboration, five broad key practices emerged as being of critical 

importance. These practices include establishing a collaborative 

management structure, maintaining collaborative relationships, 

contributing resources equitably, facilitating communication and outreach, 

and adopting a common set of standards.

When assessed according to these practices, the record for the four 

e-government initiatives is mixed. In some cases, the practices were 

effectively used, whereas in other cases project managers did not take full 

advantage of them. For example, while OPM has taken steps to promote 

close collaboration with its four designated e-Payroll providers, it has not 

fully addressed the concerns of a key stakeholder that may be required to 

make costly changes to its payroll processes and policies in response to 

OPM’s decisions. Interior has instituted a board of directors for Geospatial 

One-Stop that includes certain state and local representatives, but it has 

not yet established formal agreements with all of its federal partners or 

developed an outreach plan to encourage a broad range of states and 

localities to participate in the initiative. GSA has adopted a variety of 

effective collaboration practices on the Integrated Acquisition 

Environment project, but it has not yet fully involved CFOs from partner 

agencies. Finally, SBA has not yet taken important steps—including 

defining roles and responsibilities, establishing formal agreements with 
Page 41 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

federal partner agencies, and establishing a funding strategy based on 

shared resource commitments—to facilitate effective collaboration with its 

partners and stakeholders. Until these issues are addressed, the initiatives 

may be at risk of not fully achieving their goals.

Recommendations for 

Executive Action

To enhance the effectiveness of collaboration as a tool for the four 

e-government initiatives to use in achieving their goals, we recommend that

• the Director of OPM (1) institute a review and feedback process with VA 

to ensure that its concerns are reviewed and addressed before decisions 

are made that could have a policy or resource impact on agency payroll 

operations, and (2) ensure that a collaborative process is in place for 

development of governmentwide payroll standards;

• the Secretary of the Interior establish formal agreements with federal 

agency partners to clarify collaborative relationships and develop an 

outreach plan for the Geospatial One-Stop initiative that includes 

specific tasks for contacting and interacting with a wider range of state 

and local government GIS officials to facilitate and explain the benefits 

of broad participation in the initiative and promote the use of federal 

geospatial data standards; 

• the Administrator, GSA, modify the structure of its working groups and 

other communication mechanisms for the Integrated Acquisition 

Environment initiative to fully include the CFOs of partner agencies and 

better ensure that agreed-upon partner resource contributions are 

made; and

• the Administrator, SBA, establish a more collaborative management 

structure for the Business Gateway initiative by defining roles and 

responsibilities, establishing formal collaboration agreements with 

federal agency partners, developing a shared funding strategy, and 

implementing projectwide communication and outreach mechanisms to 

ensure that key decision makers at partner agencies are kept informed 

and involved in the management of the project.

Agency Comments and 

Our Evaluation

We received written comments on a draft of this report from the Director of 

OPM; Interior’s Assistant Secretary Policy, Management and Budget; and 

SBA’s Program Executive Officer for e-Government. We also received oral 
Page 42 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

comments from the Administrator of GSA. All four agencies generally 

agreed with our discussion of the collaboration challenges facing 

e-government initiatives. In addition, each of the agencies provided 

comments and additional or updated information about collaboration 

activities associated with their initiatives, as well as technical comments, 

which have been incorporated into the final report where appropriate.

OPM stated that it was concerned with our assessment that e-Payroll had 

not been fully effective in taking steps to promote collaboration with 

partner agencies. In the report, we noted that OPM has taken steps to 

develop and maintain collaborative relationships with its partners and 

focused our concern on OPM’s relationship with VA. Concerning our 

recommendation that OPM institute a review and feedback process with 

VA to ensure that concerns are addressed, OPM reported that such a 

process has been established and that it would continue to hold 

discussions with VA. In addition, concerning our recommendation that 

OPM ensure that a collaborative process is in place for the development of 

governmentwide payroll standards, we noted in the final report OPM’s 

position that it has taken steps to help ensure a collaborative standards 

development process by establishing a cross-agency focus group to address 

standards setting issues. If supported by a detailed strategy, OPM’s actions 

may help to address the issues we raised. OPM also provided technical 

comments, which we have incorporated as appropriate.

Interior stated that it agreed with our assessment that e-government 

projects face many challenges and that Geospatial One-Stop had made 

substantial progress in achieving its initial objectives and goals. Interior 

also acknowledged that it had not resolved all the challenges in gaining 

greater collaboration on the part of the potential stakeholders at the state 

and local levels. Interior stated that, in several ways, the draft report had 

mischaracterized the Geospatial One-Stop project as being “federalcentric.” We do not believe that the report characterizes the initiative in this 

way. Rather, the focus is on the challenge of gaining as broad participation 

as possible from state and local representatives, a task that Interior agrees 

is challenging. Interior’s Assistant Secretary, Policy, Management and 

Budget, also stated that the agency disagreed that the existence of formal 

agreements is key to sustaining a vision and making progress. However, 

Interior noted in its comments that it had established memorandums of 

agreement or funding agreements with each of its partner agencies. 

Further, our research into key collaboration practices revealed that formal 

agreements with a clear purpose, common performance outputs, and 
Page 43 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

realistic performance measures are useful in providing a firm management

foundation for collaboration.

GSA concurred with our recommendation regarding the Integrated

Acquisition Environment initiative. GSA provided additional information

about its planned activities to address our recommendation as well as

updated information about the status of the initiative. This information has 

been incorporated in the final report as appropriate. 

SBA provided several suggested technical corrections to the draft report,

and we have made those corrections in the final report where appropriate.

In its comments, SBA officials stated that the project manager believed that

slow progress in 2003 was due primarily to lack of funding from within SBA

and the addition of tasks by OMB, rather than to any shortcomings in

collaboration, and that efforts at collaboration had been made until funding

for the project became problematic. We have clarified in the final report 

that the funding shortfall was within SBA and not due to a lack of funding 

contributions from partner agencies. However, as noted in the report, the 

fact that partner agencies did not share resource commitments for the 

Business Gateway limited their overall commitment to and involvement in 

the project, thus putting the project at risk of not meeting its objectives.

As agreed with your offices, unless you publicly announce its contents 

earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report until 30 days from the

date of this report. At that time, we will send copies to the Ranking

Minority Member, House Committee on Government Reform, and the

Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Technology, Information

Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census. In addition, we will 

provide copies to the Directors of OMB and OPM, the Secretary of the 

Interior, and the Administrators of GSA and SBA. Copies will be made 

available to others on request. In addition, this report will be available at no 

charge on the GAO Web site at www.gao.gov.

If you should have any questions concerning this report, please call me at 

(202) 512-6240 or send e-mail to koontzl@gao.gov. Key contributors to this 
Page 44 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

report were Shannin Addison, Neha Bhavsar, Barbara Collier, 

Felipe Colón, Jr., Larry Crosland, John de Ferrari, and Elizabeth Roach.

Linda D. Koontz

Director, Information Management Issues
Page 45 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Appendix I

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology AAppenednxidexiIs

Our objectives were to assess (1) the progress that has been made to date 

in implementing the selected initiatives, (2) the major factors that can 

affect successful collaboration on e-government initiatives, and (3) the 

extent to which federal agencies and other entities have been collaborating 

on the selected initiatives. 

We considered several factors in selecting the four initiatives for our 

review. These factors included the number of potential collaborating 

agencies, reported costs of the initiatives, variety among the types initiative 

categories (i.e., “government to citizen,” “government to business,” 

“government to government,” “internal efficiency and effectiveness,” and 

“cross-cutting”), potential cost savings from implementing the initiatives, 

variety among managing partners, and variety among the kinds of 

stakeholders. Based on a consideration of these factors, we selected the 

following four initiatives: e-Payroll, Geospatial One-Stop, Integrated 

Acquisition Environment, and Business Gateway. 

To assess the progress of the initiatives, we reviewed capital asset plans 

and other project documentation, conducted interviews with project 

officials, and assessed electronic services made available to customers to 

date. In addition to determining the status of planned milestones, we 

evaluated the progress that had been made in achieving the overall 

objectives of each initiative within the framework of the e-government 

strategy of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

To identify key practices affecting collaboration on e-government 

initiatives, we developed criteria through a review of government, 

academic, and private sector literature on interorganizational 

collaboration. We provided these criteria to officials of OMB’s Office of 

Information and Regulatory Affairs, who agreed that the criteria were 

reasonable for assessing collaboration on e-government initiatives. Based 

on these criteria, we summarized individual key practices (i.e., those 

practices that were most commonly cited among our sources) into five 

broad practices: establishing a collaborative management structure, 

maintaining collaborative relationships, contributing resources equitably, 

facilitating communication and outreach, and reaching agreement on a 

common set of standards.

To assess the extent to which federal agencies and other entities were 

collaborating on the selected e-government initiatives, we reviewed project 

documents related to collaboration, such as communication strategies and 

memorandums of understanding. We conducted interviews with project 
Appendix I

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

Page 46 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

managers for each of the initiatives we reviewed, as well as with officials 

from the four managing partner agencies and OMB’s portfolio managers, to 

determine collaborative management practices that were in place. We also 

contacted project officials from the initiatives’ partner agencies, as well as 

the National States Geographic Information Council (regarding Geospatial 

One-Stop) and representatives from small business associations (regarding 

Business Gateway). We collected information from these entities to 

determine the extent to which key collaboration practices were being used 

effectively for the four initiatives we studied. 

Our work was conducted from December 2002 to September 2003 in 

accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
Page 47 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Appendix II

Source Materials for Key Collaboration 

Practices ApendxiI

Following are the source documents that we consulted in identifying the 

key collaboration practices described in the body of the report.

GAO Reports Program Evaluation: An Evaluation Culture and Collaborative 

Partnerships Help Build Agency Capacity. GAO-03-454. Washington, D.C.: 

May 2, 2003.

Results-Oriented Management: Agency Crosscutting Actions and Plans 

in Drug Control, Family Poverty, Financial Institution Regulation, and 

Public Health Systems. GAO-03-320. Washington, D.C.: December 20, 2002.

Results-Oriented Management: Agency Crosscutting Actions and Plans 

in Border Control, Flood Mitigation and Insurance, Wetlands, and 

Wildland Fire Management. GAO-03-321. Washington, D.C.: December 20, 

2002.

September 11: More Effective Collaboration Could Enhance Charitable 

Organizations’ Contributions in Disasters. GAO-03-259. Washington, 

D.C.: December 19, 2002.

At-Risk Youth: School-Community Collaborations Focus on Improving 

Student Outcomes. GAO-01-66. Washington, D.C.: October 10, 2000.

Head Start and Even Start: Greater Collaboration Needed on Measures of 

Adult Education and Literacy. GAO-02-348. Washington, D.C.: March 29, 

2002. 

Human Services Integration: Results of a GAO Cosponsored Conference 

on Modernizing Information Systems. GAO-02-121. Washington, D.C.: 

January 31, 2002.

Defense Health Care: Collaboration and Criteria Needed for Sizing 

Graduate Medical Education. GAO/HEHS-98-121. Washington, D.C.: 

April 29, 1998.

Federal Agency Studies Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress. Federal 

Interagency Coordination Mechanisms: Varied Types and Numerous 

Devices. July 22, 2002. http://www.congress.gov/erp/rl/pdf/RL31357.pdf

(viewed July 2003).
Appendix II

Source Materials for Key Collaboration 

Practices

Page 48 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Federal Enterprise Architecture Working Group. E-Gov Enterprise 

Architecture Guidance. Draft-Version 2.0. July 25, 2002. 

http://www.feapmo.gov/resources/E-Gov_Guidance_Final_Draft_v2.0.pdf

(viewed July 2003).

Federal Highway Administration, Office of Travel Management, Office of 

Operations (Department of Transportation). The Practice of Regional 

Transportation Operations Collaboration and Coordination. May 7, 2003. 

www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/RegionalTransOpsCollaboration/note.htm (viewed 

August 2003).

Food and Drug Administration (Department of Health and Human 

Services). An Agency Resource for Effective Collaborations: The 

Leveraging Handbook. June 2003. 

www.fda.gov/oc/leveraging/handbook.pdf (viewed July 2003).

General Services Administration. Building Blocks for Successful 

Intergovernmental Programs. August 29, 2001. 

www.gsa.gov/Portal/content/pubs_content.jsp?contentOID=119122&conte

ntType=1008 (viewed July 2003).

Hodges, S., T. Nesman, and M. Hernandez. Promising Practices: Building 

Collaboration in Systems of Care. A special report prepared at the request 

of the Department of Health and Human Services. 1999. 

www.mentalhealth.org/cmhs/ChildrensCampaign/PDFs/1998monographs/v

ol6.pdf (viewed July 2003).

Institute for Educational Leadership. Building Effective Community 

Partnerships. A special report prepared at the request of the Office of 

Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, 

U.S. Department of Justice. 

www.ojjdp.ncjrs.org/resources/files/toolkit1final.pdf (viewed July 2003).

Intergovernmental Advisory Board (General Services Administration). 

Federal, State and Local Government Experiences: Foundations for 

Successful Intergovernmental Management. October 1998. 

www.gsa.gov/cm_attachments/GSA_PUBLICATIONS/Main_8_R2AV262_0Z

5RDZ-i34K-pR.doc (viewed July 2003).

Joint Chiefs of Staff (Department of Defense). Concept for Future Joint 

Operations: Expanding Joint Vision 2010. May 1997. 

www.dtic.mil/jointvision/history/cfjoprn1.pdf (viewed July 2003).
Appendix II

Source Materials for Key Collaboration 

Practices

Page 49 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Joint History Office, Joint Chiefs of Staff (Department of Defense). The 

History of the Unified Command Plan 1946–1993. February 1995. 

www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/history/ucp.pdf (viewed July 2003).

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (Department of 

Transportation). Keys to Success: State Highway Safety and EMS 

Agencies Working Together to Improve Public Health. August 2000. 

www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/ems/pub3/index.htm (viewed July 2003).

Office of Intergovernmental Solutions, General Services Administration, 

Government Without Boundaries: A Management Approach to 

Intergovernmental Programs (May 23, 2002).

Office of Regulatory Affairs, Food and Drug Administration (Department of 

Health and Human Services). Partnership Agreements. October 2002. 

www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/ems/pub3/index.htm (viewed July 

2003).

Rinehard, Tammy A., Anna T. Laszlo, and Gwen O. Briscoe. Collaboration 

Toolkit: How to Build, Fix, and Sustain Productive Partnerships. A 

special report prepared at the request of U.S. Department of Justice, Office 

of Community Oriented Policing Services. 2001. 

www.cops.usdoj.gov/default.asp?item=344 (viewed July 2003).

International, State, 

and Local Agency 

Studies

Biedell, Jeff, David Evans, Daniela Ionova-Swider, Jonathan Littlefield, 

John Mulligan, and Je Ryong Oh. Facilitating Cross Agency Collaboration.

Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. December 2001. 

www.estrategy.gov/documents/fall_report-collaboration_121101.pdf

(viewed July 2003).

Center for Technology in Government. Tying a Sensible Knot: Best 

Practices in State-Local Information Systems, Executive Briefing, 2001. 

University at Albany/SUNY. 

Collaboration: Because It’s Good for Children and Families: A Wisconsin 

Resource Manual. www.collaboratingpartners.com/CollabManDemo.pdf

(viewed August 2003).

Dawes, Sharon S., Theresa A. Pardo, David R. Connelly, Darryl F. Green, 

and Claire R. McInerney. Partners in State and Local Information 

Systems: Lessons from the Field. Center for Technology in Government. 
Appendix II

Source Materials for Key Collaboration 

Practices

Page 50 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

University at Albany/SUNY. October 1997. 

www.ctg.albany.edu/publications/reports/partners_in_sli/partners_in_sli.p

df (viewed July 2003).

Industry Advisory Council. Cross-Jurisdictional Government 

Implementations. September 2002. www.iaconline.org/pdfs/XJuris_eGov.pdf (viewed July 2003).

La Vigne, Mark, David R. Connelly, Donna S. Canestraro, and Theresa A. 

Pardo. Reassessing New York: A Collaborative Process. Center for 

Technology in Government. University at Albany/SUNY. June 2000. 

www.ctg.albany.edu/publications/reports/reassessing_ny/reassessing_ny.p

df (viewed July 2003).

Treasury Board of Canada. The Federal Government as “Partner”: Six 

Steps to Successful Collaboration. November 1995. www.tbssct.gc.ca/pubs_pol/opepubs/TB_O3/dwnld/fgpe_e.rtf (viewed July 2003).

UK Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR) 

and JSS Pinnacle (now Pinnacle psg). Partnership: A Working Definition.

Partnership Series, Paper Number 1. October 1998 www.pinnaclepsg.com/documents/consultancy/so_consultancy_publications_detr_paper

1.pdf (viewed July 2003).

Private Sector Studies Axner, Marya, and Bill Berkowitz. Promoting Coordination, Cooperative 

Agreements and Collaborative Agreements Among Agencies. Community 

Tool Box. University of Kansas. 

ctb.ukans.edu/tools/en/sub_section_main_1229.htm (viewed July 2003).

Bailey, Darlyne, and Kelley McNally Koney. Interorganizational 

Community Based Collaboration: A Strategic Response to Shape the 

Social Work Agenda. Social Work, Volume 41, Issue 6, 1996.

Bardach, Eugene. Getting Agencies to Work Together: The Practice and 

Theory of Managerial Craftsmanship. Brookings Institution Press, 1998. 
Appendix II

Source Materials for Key Collaboration 

Practices

Page 51 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Baum, C., and A. Di Maio. Sharing Risk: Government/Business 

Partnerships. Gartner (www.gartner.com),1

 October 25, 2002. 

Cameron, Marsaili, and Steve Cranfield. Unlocking the Potential: Effective 

Partnerships for Improving Health. NHS-Executive North Thames, 

September 1998. www.doh.gov.uk/pub/docs/doh/unlomain.pdf (viewed July 

2003).

Chrislip, David D., and Carl E. Larson. Collaborative Leadership: How 

Citizens and Civic Leaders Can Make a Difference. San Francisco: 

Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1994. 

Gray, Barbara, and Eric Trist. Collaborating: Finding Common Ground for 

Multiparty Problems. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1989.

Keller, B. Breaking Down the Walls: Collaboration in the Public Sector.

Gartner (www.gartner.com), October 5, 2001. 

Keller, B., F. Caldwell, and C. Baum. Mr. President, Take Down Those 

E-Government Roadblocks. Gartner (www.gartner.com), March 2, 2001. 

Mahoney, J. Public Sector: Beware of Incompatible Partners. Gartner 

(www.gartner.com), September 18, 2002.

Mattessich, Paul W., Marta Murray-Close, and Barbara R. Monsey. 

Collaboration: What Makes IT Work, 2nd ed. Saint Paul, Minnesota: Wilder 

Publishing Center, 2001. 

Peterson, K. Determining Your Role in C-Commerce Relationships. 

Gartner (www.gartner.com), October 12, 2001. 

Phelan, P. Implementing Best Practices for Collaborative Processes.

Gartner (www.gartner.com), October 22, 2002. 

Scardino, L., and G. Kreizman. Innovation Funds: A Model for 

E-Government. Gartner (www.gartner.com), February 16, 2001. 

1

Gartner studies are available for purchase at the Gartner Web site, www.gartner.com.
Appendix II

Source Materials for Key Collaboration 

Practices

Page 52 GAO-04-6 E-Government Collaboration

Schumaker, Alice, B. J. Reed, and Sara Woods. “Collaborative Models for 

Metropolitan University Outreach: The Omaha Experience.” Cityscape: A 

Journal of Policy Development and Research, Volume 5, Number 1, 2000. 

Smith, Alan. Collaboration between Educational Institutions: Can 

Various Individual Successes Translate into a Broad Range of Sustained 

Partnerships? University of Southern Queensland. 

www.com.unisa.edu.au/cccc/papers/refereed/paper44/Paper44-1.htm

(viewed July 2003).

University of Vermont. Strengthening Community Collaborations: 

Essentials for Success. crs.uvm.edu/nnco/cd/collabh3.htm (viewed July 

2003).

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