OMB enlists bloggers’ aid in pushing management agenda

The Office of Management and Budget has launched a back-channel effort to reach out to political bloggers for their help in pushing the Bush administration's management agenda on Capitol Hill, OMB officials said Tuesday.

OMB Deputy Director for Management Clay Johnson met with a group of bloggers Tuesday after President Bush signed the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act at the White House. The act, passed by the House and Senate on Sept. 13, mandates the creation of a Web site tracking hundreds of billions of dollars in federal contract and grant spending.

Bloggers from across the political spectrum were credited with helping push the legislation quickly through Congress this summer by mounting an effort to expose two senators who had placed holds on the bill.

"The army of bloggers, editorialists and concerned citizens who worked diligently to see this bill pass deserve all the credit and praise today," said the bill's Senate co-sponsors, Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., in a statement issued after the ceremony.

At a luncheon sponsored by the IBM Center for the Business of Government in Washington later on Tuesday, OMB Director Robert Portman said that in Johnson's meeting with bloggers after the event, the deputy director told them, "You're so good at this. Can you help us with some of our other initiatives?"

Later at the luncheon, Johnson hinted at what some of those initiatives might be. He noted that Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, had introduced a bill aimed at strengthening federal performance evaluations and linking annual pay raises to minimally successful job ratings, but the legislation had failed to attract a single co-sponsor.

"If the American people knew that," Johnson said, "they would go as nuts as they did" when they learned that senators had placed holds on the spending transparency bill.

Later, when asked about how the administration's effort to put federal jobs up for competition from private firms is playing out on Capitol Hill, Johnson said, "One thing we just heard this past week was to let bloggers know that there are certain members of Congress who don't think that we should be trying to spend their money effectively. And then maybe mention a few of them."

Johnson also called legislators' efforts to place limits on the use of information on the performance of federal programs gathered through the administration's Program Assessment Rating Tool "foolish" and "infantile."

"You don't want us to pay attention to whether programs work? Boy, do I have some bloggers who'd like to know about this," Johnson said.