OMB gives e-gov status report to Congress

OMB report to Congress on E-Gov initiatives

An Office of Management and Budget report to Congress describes how the agency put e-government initiatives into action in fiscal 2005 and made information more available to agencies and the public.

OMB’s report, titled “FY 2005 Report to Congress on Implementation of the E-Government Act of 2002,” states that the government spent about $62 billion on information technology in 2005. Within the E-Government Fund that supports innovative interagency projects, OMB approved nearly $1.5 million on four initiatives:

• $612,806 to find the best practices for securing information systems and analyzing their business cases.


• $500,000 to combine commonly used IT security methods to reduce costs and improve the methods’ effectiveness.


• $200,000 to support Hurricane Katrina relief efforts by creating a governmentwide electronic benefit registration system.


• $152,887 to fund a study that concluded that indexing the majority of government information through commercial search technology gets it out to the public as the law requires.

“FirstGov.gov complements agency information dissemination programs by providing in a central location ways to help the public locate government information services,” the report states.

The report details many individual programs within several departments and agencies, such as the Defense Department’s e-business program. It allows for access to secured electronic documents stored online and translates and routes transactions among business systems.