Three more agencies reach green on PMA

NASA and the departments of Labor and State became the latest agencies to reach the peak of the e-government mountain on the President’s Management Agenda scorecard.The shows continued improvement across all five agenda items—human capital, competitive sourcing, improved financial performance, e-government, and budget and performance integration—with eight new green scores and nine fewer red ones.Every quarter the Office of Management and Budget gives agencies green, yellow or red scores for their efforts to meet the goals of the five agenda items. 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. Labor, State and NASA join the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Transportation Department, the Small Business Administration and the Office of Personnel Management in earning the top PMA score for their work on e-government. Agencies have had the most success in reaching green on e-government and human capital.Karen Evans, OMB’s administrator for e-government and IT, said agency progress on e-government could be attributed to their work on cybersecurity and privacy, deploying e-government projects and the continued growth and use of the Federal Enterprise Architecture.Evans said as of Sept. 15, 83 percent all agency systems had been certified and accredited, up from 62 percent at the end of 2003.Overall, agencies continued to improve their grades with 35 greens, 55 yellows and 40 reds, up from 27 green, 54 yellow and 49 red scores in June.“Federal departments and agencies are working better now than they were three to five years ago,” said Clay Johnson, OMB’s deputy director for management. “With the help of the President’s Management Agenda, there are habits and disciplines in place now that make it possible for agencies to more assuredly produce desired outcomes at acceptable costs.”Labor and Energy are closest to reaching green across the board, with only one yellow to overcome. For Labor, it is competitive sourcing and for Energy, it is e-government. Transportation also has four green scores, but it still has a red for financial performance.The Smithsonian is the only agency with red scores in all five categories. The Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security Department and OMB have four red scores each.