Most agencies see downgrades in e-gov progress ratings

The majority of federal agencies have not met a deadline for developing data breach notification policies, causing all but five of them to see downgrades in e-government progress in the latest President's Management Agenda score card issued by the Bush administration.

A May 22 Office of Management and Budget directive ordered agencies to develop and implement data breach notification policies for personal information in the government's possession within 120 days. The agencies were instructed to meet privacy and security requirements, such as reducing the use of Social Security numbers and beefing up encryption.

Agencies that did not complete all the requirements identified in the memo received a downgrade in their e-government progress on the fourth-quarter PMA score card, released Monday. Twenty-one of the 25 agencies rated received downgrades in e-gov progress.

Still, only one agency, the Justice Department, was downgraded in the category of overall e-gov status. Six agencies were upgraded in their status rankings. On the traffic-light-style rating system, seven agencies earned green status scores, four were given red and the rest were rated as yellow.

In announcing the latest score card, OMB pledged to continue to work with agencies "to help them strengthen their information security and privacy programs, especially as they relate to the protection of personally identifiable information."

The other four PMA initiatives -- performance management, competitive sourcing, human capital and financial performance -- showed significantly less movement in grades for both current status and progress. No agency changed its status in the financial performance or performance management categories and only the General Services Administration changed its human capital status, improving from yellow to green.

The score card, reflecting the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007, showed mixed results for competitive sourcing, under which agencies put federal jobs up for competition from private companies. Two agencies improved their status from last quarter, while two regressed. Progress scores were similarly mixed, with four agencies improving and three falling back.

"While agencies have shown great progress in implementing these requirements, there remains a lot of work to be done," Clay Johnson, OMB's deputy director for management, said. "Over the last six years, federal employees have developed significant new employee, financial, cost, investment and performance management skills, and we want to ensure federal agencies continue to improve each year as a result."