Agencies lose ground on e-gov section of management score card

Six agencies saw their grades fall on the electronic government portion of the Bush administration's latest quarterly management score card, published Monday.

The lower marks in e-government, an initiative aimed at providing citizens with online access to government services and information, occurred "primarily because [agencies] failed to complete key milestones in . . . implementation plans," said Clay Johnson, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, in a statement.

The grades released Monday reflect major agencies' progress on the five main items on the President's Management Agenda as of Sept. 30, which marked the end of fiscal 2005. The components are: e-government, human capital, competitive sourcing, financial management and linking performance information to budget decisions.

The Environmental Protection Agency, NASA and State Department saw their e-government marks on the traffic-light-style report card drop from green, indicating "success," to yellow, for "mixed results." Three agencies--the Interior and Justice departments and the Agency for International Development--saw their grades in the category fall to red, signaling "unsatisfactory" performance.

Agencies met most e-government milestones, Johnson said. But some fell short on key projects. For example, a planned migration to the Federal Docket Management System, aimed at making information on government regulations available to the public on the Web, "did not occur," Johnson noted.

"We expect e-government implementation to be back on track next quarter," Johnson said.

On the four other PMA initiatives, six agencies managed to improve their scores in specific categories, while two saw their ratings drop.

Interior, Justice and the Smithsonian Institution saw higher scores on the human capital initiative, while the Small Business Administration and Education Department moved to green on competitive sourcing and the General Services Administration earned a top rating for financial management.

The Commerce Department fell from green to yellow on human capital and the Energy Department dropped to yellow on competitive sourcing.

The Office of Personnel Management, which is responsible for the human capital initiative, had no immediate comment on the reasons for changes in grades in that category.

OMB had no immediate comment on the reasons behind Energy's fall on competitive sourcing, an initiative encouraging agencies to let private sector companies bid on work classified as commercial in nature.

The human capital category boasted the most green lights, at 12, and e-government had the fewest, at four. There was no movement on the budget and performance integration section of the score card.

Johnson's statement also noted successes in some program-specific areas. For example, he said, the State Department and more than 40 other agencies with employees working overseas had made progress in reducing costs. The agencies worked to make sure that the projects they undertook were important to missions and staffed at appropriate levels, and centralized support services where possible.

Reviews to ensure that overseas work is "right-sized" have resulted in a 7 percent reduction in staffing for recently planned embassy construction projects, "equating to savings of about $24 million in projected overseas personnel costs per year," Johnson wrote.