OMB looking to shut down systems that duplicate e-gov projects

CAMBRIDGE, Md.—The Office of Management and Budget has analyzed agency IT investments—Exhibit 53s—to determine if they use systems that duplicate any of the 25 e-government projects, the Lines of Business Consolidation or the enterprisewide software buying effort known as SmartBuy.Tim Young, OMB's associate administrator for e-government and IT, said yesterday at the 2005 Interagency Resources Management Conference here that OMB wants to further align spending with the consolidation projects."We are working with agencies to come to an agreement on these three areas and how we can improve that alignment," he said during a panel discussion of the Lines of Business efforts. "The end goal is to further refine their e-government implementation plans."The analysis is one of five goals for 2005 OMB laid out in December [see GCN ].Young added that OMB and agencies will follow the e-government strategies to decide which duplicative systems eventually will be shut down.Agencies are migrating to a number of e-government projects, such as E-Travel, E-Payroll and systems within the Integrated Acquisition Environment. Once they are fully utilizing the e-gov systems, OMB expects them to take down their internal systems."We are asking to what extent these systems are necessary anymore," Young said.