Going for green

"Expanded Electronic Government (E-Gov) President's Management Agenda (PMA) Scorecard Cost, Schedule and Performance Standard for Success"

Federal agencies have new hints to guide them to green ovals in the e-government column on their quarterly Office of Management and Budget scorecards.

The Executive Branch Management Scorecard ranks 26 agencies in five categories set forth in the President's Management Agenda. A memo sent today to agency chief information officers divulges three additional scorecard evaluation criteria.

In addition to keeping cost, schedule and performance deviations in major information technology projects within a 10 percent threshold — a previously released benchmark — agency CIOs should now know that OMB officials ask the following:

Do agencies use the earned value management technique for major investments, and do they use operational analyses for completed IT projects?

Is the data gleaned by earned value and operational analyses utilized?

Are the results of those analyses showing that agencies are not exceeding that 10 percent variance threshold?

Agencies should supply OMB with documented EVM-use policies, projects' baseline goals, evidence of how and when performance data is used internally by agencies, and corrective action plans if necessary, states the memo from Karen Evans, OMB's administrator for e-government and information technology..

About 44 percent of government agencies do not have acceptable justification for major IT investments, according to an OMB report released earlier this month. But 72 percent have mechanisms to "validate performance relative to cost, schedule and performance goals," and about half of those agencies meet at least 90 percent of cost and schedule goals.

The next round of scores will be handed out at the end of September, during the budget review process. The Bush administration plans to spend approximately $60 million for IT funding in fiscal year 2005.