Forman defends e-gov selection

OMB's E-Government Strategy

Bush administration officials refuted findings in a General Accounting Office report that the Office of Management and Budget did not have all the necessary data to make an informed selection for the 24 e-government initiatives.

A GAO report, released Dec. 19, criticized the Bush administration for failing to have clear business plans. The GAO report, released by Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said the 24 e-government projects lacked critical data necessary to assess accountability.

OMB officials, however, said the administration streamlined the process but that they did assess such key details during the selection process.

"We used a commercial e-strategy best practice approach" in the selection process, said Mark Forman, associate director for information technology and e-government at OMB, in a written statement.

The process, which is documented in the Bush administration's fiscal 2003 budget and its e-government strategy, includes the use of a "rigorous multi-attribute scoring algorithm to pick initiatives that meet the strategic criteria," Forman said.

Furthermore, the 24 e-government projects are not new systems. Rather they are consolidations of projects where there were redundancies.

"They were the 24 initiatives — out of an original list of over 300 — that reflected the best opportunities to simplify convoluted government initiatives, reduce redundant paperwork burden and save money by consolidating redundant efforts within 18 to 24 months," he said.

Each project did have a detailed business case, but the cases were developed after the selection process, he said.

"The business cases were part of the fiscal 2003 budget process and have been updated as part of the fiscal 2004 process," he said.

Some of those documents were not given to GAO. It is OMB policy not to release internal budget documents that are "pre-decisional," because those documents have not been updated to reflect budget decisions.