Where things stand

The e-government initiatives are moving forward, even if all of the original goals have not been met. Some of the most recent updates include:

e-Rulemaking

A working group will finish gathering the requirements for Module 2, the Federal Docket Management System, by the end of April. Agency testing will begin in September, and officials plan to migrate from 14 agency-specific systems to the single central system for all regulations documents at the beginning of 2005.

Thirteen agencies are piloting Module 3, a back-end set of tools to write, develop and review federal regulations. Participation in this module is voluntary.

Grants.gov

A new data set for research and related data was delivered to the initiative program office earlier this month. That data set will be used by all federal research agencies to provide applicants with a standard set of data requirements.

Officials are pilot testing a security solution from the e-Authentication initiative that will allow agencies to authenticate grant applicants.

USAJobs

More than 700,000 résumés should be submitted online in the next year. That number is based on the monthly averages of submissions since the portal went live in August 2003. It is a dramatic increase compared to the number of submissions prior to the portal's existence.

Other enhancements are planned for late spring or early summer. They will be aimed at streamlining the application process and providing real-time access to the status of open positions.

Line of Business initiatives

The General Services Administration is developing a request for information to submit to industry to help develop business cases for four of the five common lines of business identified by the Office of Management and Budget: financial management, human resources, grants management and case management.

Department of Health and Human Services officials are leading the development of the fifth line of business: public health monitoring.