OMB names two new e-gov portfolio managers

The Office of Management and Budget tapped Mike Turk and Shivani Desai to fill two of its three vacant e-government portfolio manager slots.Turk, who started Dec. 1, replaces Paul Mamo as the government-to-citizen portfolio managers. Mamo replaced Jonathan Womer, who took another job within OMB in July. Mamo finished his 90-day detail in December and returned to the Internal Revenue Service.Desai will take over for Tad Anderson as the government-to-business portfolio manager. Anderson became OMB’s associate administrator for e-government and IT in November. Desai works at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Information. She starts at the end of December.OMB still must find a portfolio manager for the government-to-government projects.Turk, a political appointee, comes from the Energy Department, where he managed the intranet and new Web presence projects under the agency’s Innovative Department of Energy E-government Applications (IDEA) program.“Karen asked me to come over to OMB,” Turk said. “The portfolio projects are fairly far along so my main goal is to keep them on track and hit their milestones.”Turk said he already has met with the project managers and plans to meet with the project teams soon.Before working for Energy, Turk was a technology consultant to Grassroots Enterprise Inc. of San Francisco, where he developed tools and strategies to encourage citizen participation in government.