E-gov plan to provide updates

President's management agenda

The Bush administration's e-government task force is developing a tracking system that will provide monthly updates on how agencies are progressing with initiatives started under the president's management agenda, according to Mark Forman.

To ensure accountability for the initiatives being developed and already under way in those areas, "we have a tracking system that we'll be deploying where monthly we'll be reporting on these functions," said Forman, associate director of information technology and e-government at the Office of Management and Budget, speaking at the Government Paperwork Elimination Act Conference Sept. 14.

The five areas of President Bush's management agenda are using technology to create a citizen-centric e-government; integrating performance and budget information; strategically managing human capital; increasing competitive sourcing; and improving financial management. Officials must tie those areas together to achieve real performance improvements in government, OMB officials have stated repeatedly since they first started discussing the agenda in May. "There's an accepted need for a simple way to track agencies' progress," Forman said.

The task force comprises e-government leaders from every agency and is led by Forman. Members are close to handing over a list of high-impact, cross-agency e-government initiatives to the President's Management Council for a final selection of 20 initiatives at the council's October meeting, Forman said.

Among the questions the task force must resolve are determining how and what information will be collected, and what technology will be used to provide the monthly reports.