OMB Reveals Lack of Progress on E-Gov
by Matt Lewis, 12/19/2006
GovExec reports today that the Bush administration's push for "E-government" has not yet to show big returns, according a report by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
E-gov is one of the five planks of the President's management agenda. The basic idea is to make government programs and data easier to use by setting up "one-stop shop" websites. A lot of these websites are up and running. Check out Grants.gov for a good example.
Yet, site traffic and usage are low. Nobody really knows about these websites, and the administration hasn't been asking agencies to use them enough. Some site functions still don't work very well, either.
"We're in the second phase [of e-government] and we're trying to drive utilization and usage of these initiatives across the government," [OMB official Andrew] Ciafardini said. "The first phase was getting these programs implemented. It was more proof of concept -- get these things up and running."
In his budget proposal last year, the President claimed that the vast majority of federal agencies had made enough progress on the E-gov initiative. The next budget is coming out in February. How will the President grade agencies on E-gov then?
