Measuring success

Mark Forman, associate director of information technology and e-government at the Office of Management and Budget, has several measures that he will use to determine the government's success or failure in becoming an electronic government. And Forman has his own criteria for judging his success in leading that change.

For the next year, Forman already has two goals for measuring federal e-government efforts:

* Broad use of both commercial and government best practices in using the Internet. For example, the government could use Web portals such as FirstGov to provide access to multiple government services, while making sure that the best practices are adapted to the needs of each service being enhanced.

* A 5 percent annual increase in productivity. Forman could gauge this in two ways: by checking to see if agencies met the improvement goals they proposed under the Government Performance and Results Act, or by examining the business cases agencies developed to justify a new program or continued funding.

OMB officials plan to develop other goals, Forman said. And he will judge his own success by any significant improvements in service that agencies can achieve without using more resources than are now available.