OMB wants details on cost savings

Office of Management and Budget memo

The Office of Management and Budget wants to know how much savings its e-government and line-of-business initiatives are producing across the government, according to an Aug. 8 OMB memo.

Officials are interested in what information technology investments will be adjusted or canceled because of the two wide-ranging initiatives. They also want agencies to make baseline cost estimates for the investments by Sept. 30.

Improving efficiency and saving money are two of the initiatives’ key goals, wrote Karen Evans, OMB’s administrator for e-government and IT, in the memo.

The memo includes a framework to help agencies determine IT projects’ baseline costs. OMB also wants to see a measurement of the money saved on an ongoing basis after agencies migrate to shared systems or retire stand-alone systems, the memo states. All such measurements should begin by Sept. 30.

The effort builds on OMB’s e-government and line-of-business execution plans and the agency’s focus on earned value management and project planning.

The fiscal 2007 budget states that agencies should adopt common practices so they can shut down redundant systems, thereby saving money and freeing up resources.

Evans wrote that OMB has already seen improvements to citizen services and increased efficiencies.

“We must now concentrate on identifying and realizing the cost savings these initiatives are providing on a governmentwide basis,” she wrote.