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 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 initiatives 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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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 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 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, 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. 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 performed by the Open GIS Consortium. However, OMB accelerated this schedule by requiring that the portal be operational by May 2003.