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More about the new Digital Government Strategy
The new Digital Government Stragegy has a brief list of related documents. This list seems useful enough to repeat and highlight here:
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The Digital Government Strategy complements several initiatives aimed at building a 21st century government that works better for the American people. These include:
- Executive Order 13571 (Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service)
- Executive Order 13576 (Delivering an Efficient, Effective, and Accountable Government)
- President’s Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government
- OMB Memorandum M-10-06 (Open Government Directive)
- National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC)
- 25-Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal Information Technology Management (IT Reform)
- Federal Shared Services Strategy
- State of the Federal Web Report (2011)
- National Dialogue on Improving Federal Websites
- National Dialogue on the Federal Mobility Strategy
Open Government Groups Urge Senators to Restore Funding for Transparency Efforts
Thanks OMB Watch and the Sunlight Foundation! These two open government groups just sent a letter to the Senate about the E-Gov Fund in the second “minibus” appropriations bill. In the letter, the groups raise and echo concerns regarding the funding level for e-government in the Statement of Administration Policy concerning H.R. 2354. They state that funding levels are inadequate to support crucial transparency programs such as USAspending.gov and Data.gov and ask that the E-Gov Fund remain a separate budget line to preserve the reporting requirements of the E-Gov Act, which provide transparency about how this money is spent.
Here’s the text of the OMBWatch/Sunlight letter:
November 16, 2011Re: FY 2012 Appropriations for the Electronic Government Fund
Dear Senators:
We are writing to urge you to protect funding for the Electronic Government Fund at the General Services Administration in H.R. 2354, the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. As currently written, H.R. 2354 would not provide adequate funding for the E-Gov Fund’s important programs, which provide critical support for the construction of a more transparent and efficient government and serve as a building block for private-sector innovations that create high-tech jobs.
The E-Gov Fund has a proven track record of successful transparency projects that have delivered efficiency improvements and increased government accountability. For instance, USAspending.gov and the IT Dashboard have helped root out government waste and inefficiency and recently led to the elimination of some $3 billion in failing technology projects. PaymentAccuracy.gov shines a light on improper federal payments, which total billions of dollars each year, and Challenge.gov provides a low-cost platform to help agencies bring the public in to identify more efficient solutions to problems facing the country.
In addition, E-Gov Fund projects provide the framework for vibrant private-sector business and job creation. The thousands of government data sets now available through Data.gov are building blocks for innovative new IT products. For instance, the search engine Bing now integrates Medicare quality data into searches for hospitals. Brightscope, a start-up company, has raised $2 million in venture capital and created 30 jobs through their analysis of retirement plan data from the Department of Labor.
Unfortunately, cuts to the E-Gov Fund in FY 2011 have already hurt successful projects. Needed upgrades to increase transparency and improve data quality have been delayed or abandoned, and two early-stage projects have been terminated. Additional cuts will further hamper efforts to make government more efficient and transparent.
These cuts are penny-wise and pound-foolish. The E-Gov Fund supports powerful tools for reducing waste, fraud, and abuse and for creating private-sector jobs, and given appropriate funding, these projects result in benefits far in excess of their costs.
To support continued transparency, efficiency, and job creation, we respectfully urge you to restore full funding for the E-Gov Fund. In particular, we ask you to support the president’s recommendation of $34 million to preserve these important programs.
We also ask that the E-Gov Fund remain separate from the Federal Citizen Services Fund, as requested in the Statement of Administration Policy on H.R. 2354. Because the proposed Information and Engagement for Citizens account would not be subject to reporting requirements of the Electronic Government Act of 2002 and has not been authorized by Congress, combining the funds would decrease government transparency and accountability.
We appreciate your time and attention to this issue. If you have any questions or would like to discuss this issue further, please contact Sam Rosen-Amy of OMB Watch at (202) 683-4806 or Daniel Schuman of the Sunlight Foundation at (202) 742-1520 x 273.
Sincerely,
OMB Watch Sunlight Foundation
Problems with White House Petition Website
An article in the Huffington Post examnes the White House We the People petition web site, and garners some interesting lessons about e-government. It finds that “getting 150 print signatures is vastly easier than getting 150 electronic ones,” that the site was plagued with unannounced and unexplained downtime, and that the site had a cumbersome, difficult, time-consuming, and buggy registration process. It says that the registration process “violates the White House’s own policy for registering on Federal government websites” and that the site’s online record keeping features violate the White House’s own Open Government Directive. It says that, initially, the We the People website was not even easy to find. It notes the special difficulties associated with assuring that individuals don’t vote more than once, and the conflict of public officials wanting to maximize the public perception that they are open while at the same time doing as much as possible to control the flow of information that might prove politically damaging. It concludes that, regardless of the problems with the site, it “is praiseworthy as a significant new tool for bringing democracy into the Internet Age.”
- The Case of the Missing White House Petitions by J.H. Snider, Huffington Post (Oct 31, 2011).
Should Government Be Run Like a Business?
GovLoop, the social network for government, has an interesting piece with lots of comments by government workers on the question “Should Government Be Run Like a Business?”
- Should Government Be Run Like a Business?, by Patrick Fiorenza, GovLoop (August 17, 2011).
Quoting from an article (Denhardt, R. B. and Denhardt, J. V. (2000), The New Public Service: Serving Rather than Steering. Public Administration Review, 60: 549–559) Patrick suggests that Public Managers Should:
1. Serve, rather than steer
2. The public interest is the aim, not the by-product.
3. Think strategically, act democratically.
4. Serve citizens, not customers.
5. Accountability isn’t simple.
6. Value people, not just productivity.
7. Value citizenship and public service above entrepreneurship.
See also: E-Gov: are we citizens or customers?
Building a 21st Century Digital Government
May 24, 2012 / Leave a comment
Presidential Memorandum For The Heads Of Executive Departments And Agencies.
For far too long, the American people have been forced to navigate a labyrinth of information across different Government programs in order to find the services they need. In addition, at a time when Americans increasingly pay bills and buy tickets on mobile devices, Government services often are not optimized for smartphones or tablets, assuming the services are even available online.
…Today, the CIO is releasing that strategy, entitled Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People (Strategy), which provides agencies with a 12-month roadmap that focuses on several priority areas.
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