OMB reports little progress on PMA’s e-gov goals

The Office of Management and Budget today handed out its final set of grades for fiscal 2003, and agency progress remains stymied in getting to green on e-government under the President’s Management Agenda.OMB gives agencies of green, yellow or red for their efforts to meet the goals of the five agenda items, which are budget and performance integration, competitive sourcing, e-government, financial performance and human capital management. Green means an agency has met all the standards for success; yellow means it has met some but not all; and red means there are serious problems. OMB grades each agency on its overall status and on its progress toward implementing the agenda items. OMB awarded the same scores as in the June report card to every agency except the Smithsonian Institution, which was downgraded to red from yellow in overall progress. This time, OMB handed out 15 red, 10 yellow and one green rating to the 26 agencies as compared to 14 red, 11 yellow and one green. The National Science Foundation remains the only agency to receive a green score on overall progress.Five agencies—the departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Interior and Treasury—also were downgraded to yellow on their progress scores in getting to green on e-government. The departments of Commerce and Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency improved their progress scores. Commerce and EPA advanced to green from yellow and DHS moved to yellow from red. Agencies made the most progress under the competitive sourcing category, with eight agencies, including the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Health and Human Services, Interior, Justice and Transportation and the General Services Administration, upgrading to yellow from red.Energy and NSF also improved their scores to yellow in the budget and performance category.