E-gov ideas get go-ahead

The President's Management Council on Oct. 3 approved a list of 23 e-government initiatives developed by a governmentwide task force for completion within the next two years, according to the task force's leader, Mark Forman.

The Office of Management and Budget created the task force in July to come up with a set of crossagency, high-impact initiatives. A $20 million request for fiscal 2002 in the Bush administration's new e-government fund will pay for some of the initiatives.

Twenty-two of the initiatives are fairly evenly spread among the four e-government areas outlined in the President's management agenda, said Forman, OMB's associate director for information technology and e-government. The remaining initiative is a governmentwide security infrastructure to support e-government services, Forman said.

The four e-government areas focus on improving service to individuals, businesses, within the federal government, and between federal, state, local and international agencies.

The task force developed a business case for each of the initiatives and will be releasing the full list soon, Forman said.