E-gov chief says budget delays not hurting tech projects

The head of the Bush administration's e-government initiative said Wednesday that delays over budget approvals have not adversely affected information technology projects within federal agencies.

"So far, it has not been a binding constraint," Mark Forman, associate director of information technology and e-government at the White House Office of Management and Budget, said in an interview. "We've asked were there binding constraints and where there have been, we've worked with the appropriators to take care of that."

Forman added that the situation is better than he expected. "It's not nearly what I thought it would be because we've got so much ... that were multi-year projects," he said.

After addressing attendees of the 2002 FedFocus conference in Reston, Va., Forman defended his action that froze IT spending in the 22 agencies slated to move to the proposed Homeland Security Department.

"This is basic enterprise management, and they haven't had that. This is all new," he said of federal procurement officers. "They're working through the change."

Forman's e-government team is working closely with the White House Office of Homeland Security to piggyback efforts to create a comprehensive infrastructure of technology networks that are interoperable across federal agencies. The system will underpin the Bush administration's 24 e-government initiatives, designed to roll out online government services to citizens and businesses.

Norm Enger, director of e-government at the Office of Personnel Management, described the five projects that he manages under the e-government umbrella, in an earlier speech at the conference.

The OPM projects "frame the civil-employee lifestyle," including employee recruitment, training and security clearances, he said. The office intends to consolidate and link databases for managing recruitment data, as well as to reduce the civilian employee clearance data into one system.

Next year, OPM officials plan to link that one-stop shop of clearance information-called the Security/Suitability Investigations Index-with a similar Defense Department project. The ultimate goal is to migrate from a paper-based clearance process to an electronic system. Eighty percent of the project is scheduled for completion by Jan. 30, he said.

Additionally, OPM will reduce the current 22 agencies that have separate payroll systems into two systems for the entire federal workforce. By mid-November, OPM plans to sign off on the projects. OPM aims to have the systems in place by September 2004.

"That's moving very, very rapidly," he said.