Full-time project managers a must

Major projects must have the attention of full-time project managers, said Mark Forman, administrator of the Office of E-Government and Information Technology at the Office of Management and Budget.

A recent Chief Information Officers Council survey of federal project management showed that agencies often have project managers, but "we're not willing to devote them full-time to these projects," Forman said. He was speaking May 1 at the Input Inc. MarketView 2003 conference.

He said that in his view, any project valued at more than $5 million in needs the oversight of a full-time manager — and that manager must be a government employee, working with the many different function areas within the agencies affected by the project.

"We're going to train or hire," he said.

Several hundred agency business cases from the fiscal 2004 budget are still on OMB's "at-risk" list because of a lack of adequate project management.