[House Hearing, 107 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
TURNING THE TORTOISE INTO THE HARE: HOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CAN
TRANSITION FROM OLD ECONOMY SPEED TO BECOME A MODEL FOR ELECTRONIC
GOVERNMENT
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY AND PROCUREMENT POLICY
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 21, 2002
__________
Serial No. 107-164
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
85-123 WASHINGTON : 2003
___________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512-1800
Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland TOM LANTOS, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
STEPHEN HORN, California PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
JOHN L. MICA, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
BOB BARR, Georgia DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
DAN MILLER, Florida ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
DOUG OSE, California DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
RON LEWIS, Kentucky JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JIM TURNER, Texas
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
DAVE WELDON, Florida JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida DIANE E. WATSON, California
C.L. ``BUTCH'' OTTER, Idaho STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia ------
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
------ ------ (Independent)
Kevin Binger, Staff Director
Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
James C. Wilson, Chief Counsel
Robert A. Briggs, Chief Clerk
Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on Technology and Procurement Policy
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JIM TURNER, Texas
STEPHEN HORN, California PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
DOUG OSE, California PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia
Ex Officio
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director
Victoria Proctor, Professional Staff Member
James DeChene, Clerk
Mark Stephenson, Minority Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on March 21, 2002................................... 1
Statement of:
Hite, Randy C., Director, Information Technology Systems
Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office, accompanied by Dave
McClure, Director, Information Technology Management
Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office; and Mark Forman,
Associate Director for Information Technology and E-
Government, Executive Office of the President, OMB......... 12
Holcomb, Lee, CIO, Co-Chair, Federal Architecture and
Infrastructure Committee, Federal CIO Council, NASA; Debra
Stouffer, Deputy Chief Information Officer for IT Reform,
Co-Chair, Best Practices Committee, Federal CIO Council,
HUD; Mayi Canales, Deputy CIO, E-Government Portfolio
Coordinator, Federal CIO Council, Department of Treasury;
Laura Callahan, Deputy CIO, Information Technology Center,
Co-Chair, Workforce & Human Capital for IT, Federal CIO
Council, Department of Labor; Janet Barnes, CIO, OPM; and
Lloyd Blanchard, Chief Operating Officer, Office of
Management & Administration, Office of the Associate Deputy
Administrator, Small Business Administration............... 68
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Barnes, Janet, CIO, OPM, prepared statement of............... 118
Blanchard, Lloyd, Chief Operating Officer, Office of
Management & Administration, Office of the Associate Deputy
Administrator, Small Business Administration, prepared
statement of............................................... 136
Callahan, Laura, Deputy CIO, Information Technology Center,
Co-Chair, Workforce & Human Capital for IT, Federal CIO
Council, Department of Labor, prepared statement of........ 108
Canales, Mayi, Deputy CIO, E-Government Portfolio
Coordinator, Federal CIO Council, Department of Treasury,
prepared statement of...................................... 88
Davis, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Virginia, prepared statement of......................... 4
Forman, Mark, Associate Director for Information Technology
and E-Government, Executive Office of the President, OMB,
prepared statement of...................................... 46
Hite, Randy C., Director, Information Technology Systems
Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office, prepared statement
of......................................................... 15
Holcomb, Lee, CIO, Co-Chair, Federal Architecture and
Infrastructure Committee, Federal CIO Council, NASA,
prepared statement of...................................... 71
Stouffer, Debra, Deputy Chief Information Officer for IT
Reform, Co-Chair, Best Practices Committee, Federal CIO
Council, HUD, prepared statement of........................ 82
Turner, Hon. Jim, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Texas, prepared statement of............................ 10
TURNING THE TORTOISE INTO THE HARE: HOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CAN
TRANSITION FROM OLD ECONOMY SPEED TO BECOME A MODEL FOR ELECTRONIC
GOVERNMENT
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2002
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Technology and Procurement Policy,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m. in room
2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Davis of Virginia
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Davis and Turner.
Mr. Davis. Good afternoon and welcome to the Subcommittee
on Technology and Procurement Policies oversight hearing on
Electronic Government in Enterprise Architecture.
Before I continue, I ask unanimous consent that all
Members' and witnesses' written opening statements be included
in the record. Without objection, so ordered.
I ask unanimous consent that all articles, exhibits and
extraneous or tabular material referred to be included in the
record. Without objection, so ordered.
After a number of years in which there have been so many
calls for the Federal Government to reinvent its delivery of
services by creating a digital government, this hearing will
specifically examine both the context and the direction of
electronic government at the Federal level. We will do this by
examining the e-government and IT initiatives that are being
developed at the direction of the President by the Office of
OMB through the newly created Office of Associate Director for
Information Technology and E-Government, a position currently
held by Mr. Mark Forman. We will also be hearing from GAO about
the use of enterprise architecture across the government and
how enterprise architecture is being implemented by OMB and by
the managing partner agencies charged with carrying out the 24
e-government initiatives approved by the President's Management
Council last fall.
In addition, the subcommittee will be hearing from the same
Federal agencies regarding their effort to streamline their
respective information resources management infrastructure in
order to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of government
processes in support of electronic government.
As electronic commerce and e-business transactions become
commonplace, providing for end to end transactions, the demand
for electronic government has increased. In August 2000, a
Harris/ Teeter Poll conducted for KPMG and the Council for
Excellence in Government found that 75 percent of the public
expects the Internet to improve its ability to get information
from Federal agencies and 60 percent expect e-government to
have a strong, positive effect on overall government
operations.
In 2000, Mr. Turner and I each introduced legislation
separately that would have established a Chief Information
Officer [CIO] for the Federal Government as an independent
Cabinet level office. In considering that legislation in a
hearing before the then-Subcommittee on Government Management,
Information and Technology in September 2000, we learned about
the problems the Federal Government is facing in transforming
itself from an organization that manages information in a
discrete, stovepipe fashion to one that simplifies and unifies
information agencies government-wide. Those challenges
potentially hinder the Government's ability to reap the cost of
service benefits we hope to achieve through IT modernization
efforts and employment of electronic government.
Congressman Turner has introduced legislation in this
Congress to create the Office of CIO within OMB and establish
an e-government fund. During his first year in office the
President established electronic government as one of the five
key elements of his management and performance plan. As the
administration's leading Federal e-government executive, Mr.
Forman is responsible for carrying out the President's goal of
developing a citizen-centric government through the use of the
Internet and for formulating the Federal Government's IT
policy.
To carry out this objective, Mr. Forman has led an
interagency task force since July 2001, whose purpose is to
identify high payoff e-gov opportunities to achieve strategic
improvements in citizen access to information, reduce burdens
on businesses, strengthen intergovernmental relationships, and
advance internal government efficiency.
In that vein, Mr. Forman has moved forward with the
administration's Enterprise Information Management and
Integration Initiative, using the principles of ``unify and
simplify'' in identifying e-government priorities. In October,
the President's Management Council selected 23 cross-agency e-
government initiatives for funding, and added a 24th payroll
processing initiative this past January. Last month, OMB issued
its E-Government Strategy Report, which lays out the
implementation road map for developing and deploying those 24
initiatives. In addition to gaining a better understanding
about the e-government initiatives and plans for
implementation, the subcommittee will also take this
opportunity to hear from GAO on its recent report on the use of
enterprise architecture by the Federal Government.
As an essential tool for effectively and efficiently
engineering business processes and for implementing and
evolving their supporting systems, enterprise architecture is
regarded by many as a fundamental component of IT modernization
and, in turn, of the implementation of electronic government.
Transforming our government stovepipe information structure to
a cost- and process-efficient network is critical to the
successful deployment of the administration's 24 e-government
initiatives, and IT modernization efforts overall. Yet, if
these objectives are pursued without determining in advance the
underlying architecture, we could be undermining our goal of
better utilizing technology across the traditional boundaries
of bureaucracy.
We will be using this forum to learn from Mr. Forman, and
the lead agency managers, of the selection of the 24 e-
government initiatives on how they are using EA principles to
approach the creation and deployment of these initiatives. We
will also learn how agencies are using IT overall to retool
their information management and architecture to achieve cross-
functional integration that results in efficiency and
accountability enterprise-wide.
We will review how Federal agencies address enterprise-wide
issues that have traditionally been dealt with bureau by bureau
or department by department. We will hear how they are using EA
principles to guide their modernization efforts. In addition,
information security is an essential component of any
successful electronic government effort. The citizen and
private sector confidence in the protection and dissemination
of information shared by the Government is equally critical.
Therefore, as part of this discussion, we would like to
understand the agencies' processes for identifying and
implementing proper security and privacy policies for
information systems, both overall and in respective systems
that will be used for e-government initiatives.
Throughout the past year, this subcommittee has been
committed to exploring ways the Government can obtain the best
value for taxpayer dollars while providing the most efficient
services to citizens. This hearing will be no different in
asking how the Government is reforming itself with respect to
IT investments in the information infrastructure that will
support electronic government. We will explore future
legislative initiatives that will facilitate cross-agency
cooperation for simplifying and unifying redundant business and
architecture, particularly in support of e-government
initiatives.
Today, the subcommittee will hear testimony from the
following witnesses: Mr. Randy Hite, Director, IT Systems
Issues, GAO, accompanied by Mr. Dave McClure, Director, IT
Management Issues, GAO; Mr. Mark Forman, Associate Director,
Information Technology and E-Government, OMB; Mr. Lee Holcomb,
Co-Chair, Federal Architecture and Infrastructure Committee,
Federal CIO Council and CIO at NASA; Ms. Debra Stouffer,
Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Manager on detail to
OMB and Deputy CIO at HUD on temporary leave; Ms. Mayi Canales,
Deputy CIO, Department of Treasury; Dr. Laura Callahan, Deputy
CIO, Department of Labor; Ms. Janet Barnes, CIO, OPM; and Dr.
Lloyd Blanchard, CIO, Small Business Administration.
I will yield to Representative Turner for his opening
statement.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Tom Davis follows:]
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Mr. Turner. Thank you.
I appreciate the hearing we are having today and I
appreciate your leadership in this particular area. I think all
of us fully understand the information technology revolution
has transformed our society and that it has certainly
transformed the way we do business in the private sector and in
government. I also think we have the commonly held view that in
government, we have not moved as rapidly in the transformation
as has the private sector. It is important that we do so, not
only because we can save millions of taxpayer dollars if we do,
but we can make government more accessible and user friendly
than it is today.
This committee had the opportunity to hear a witness in a
previous hearing, Mr. Tom Siebel of the Siebel Corp. He
presented a bit of testimony that was quite interesting because
he had reviewed the information available to the various
agencies of government regarding the terrorists who boarded
those planes on September 11th and had drawn at least the
tentative conclusion that perhaps with the better utilization
of information technology that we would have known enough to
have prevented that terrible tragedy.
Not only are we now engaged in an effort to make government
more efficient, more user friendly, but perhaps to make
government better able to preserve and protect our own personal
security. So this is an important topic and one that I feel
this committee has a very important role in pursuing.
I think we all understand that we need to make some
progress and perhaps need legislation. As the chairman
mentioned, I introduced what is known as the E-Government Act
of 2001 which was introduced in the Senate by Senator
Lieberman. That bill as well as the bill the chairman has
introduced in the past are all designed to try to bring us more
quickly into the 21st century with regard to our utilization of
information technology.
The bill that I introduced with Senator Lieberman was heard
this morning in the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and
reported out in an amended form. I haven't had the opportunity
to take a look at it but I would say I hope we can all work
together to move that or something similar to it forward in the
legislative process.
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses today,
particularly Mr. Forman as he outlines for us the efforts that
the administration is making. I know you are responsible for
the administration of the E-Government Fund established in the
President's budget. You direct the CIO Council, advise on
appointments of those CIOs of various agencies and monitor and
work with those CIOs. We will look forward to hearing your
report regarding the E-Government Initiative which I understand
was recently approved by the President's Management Council.
I know on our second panel we have several chief
information officers or deputy CIOs here as well. So this is a
very timely hearing and again, I thank the chairman for
scheduling it for us.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Jim Turner follows:]
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Mr. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Turner.
I will call our first panel witnesses, Randy Hite and Mark
Forman. It is the policy of the committee that all witnesses be
sworn before you testify.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Davis. To afford sufficient time for questions, if the
witnesses would try to limit themselves to no more than 5
minutes. We have your testimony and have looked it over and
have questions. All written statements will be a part of the
permanent record.
I will begin with Mr. Hite followed by Mr. Forman. Welcome,
and thank you for being here.
STATEMENTS OF RANDY C. HITE, DIRECTOR, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
SYSTEMS ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, ACCOMPANIED BY
DAVE MCCLURE, DIRECTOR, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT
ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; AND MARK FORMAN,
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND E-GOVERNMENT,
EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, OMB
Mr. Hite. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in
today's hearing.
My responsibilities at GAO include our work on enterprise
architecture and accompanying me today is Dave McClure, whose
responsibilities include e-government.
Before summarizing our statement, let me briefly describe
what enterprise architecture and e-government are in lay terms.
In a nutshell, enterprise architecture is a high level
description of how an entity operates today, how it intends to
operate tomorrow and how it plans to get from today to
tomorrow. An entity can be an organization such as a Federal
agency or it can be a functional or mission area that cuts
across more than one agency such an e-government initiative.
Also, it is important to understand that this architecture
is more than merely a technical road map and, in fact,
describes the entity's operations in both business and
technology terms. Metaphorically, an enterprise architecture
can be compared to the plans, models, construction blueprints,
building codes and materials standards that would be used to
construct a modern skyscraper.
Federal e-government refers to a type of business asset or
resource consisting of people, process and technology that
leverages the power of digital technologies, particular Web-
based applications so that Federal agencies can better serve
their four customer bases, those being citizens, private
businesses, other levels of government and other Federal
agencies.
With these definitions as the backdrop, our testimony
addresses four questions: how can we define and measure the
state of enterprise architecture and maturity; what is the
state of maturity in the Federal Government; what role should
these architectures play in implementing e-government; and what
leadership steps can OMB take to ensure needed progress is made
in both of these areas?
The answer to the first two questions is summarized
graphically on the briefing board to my right. We also provided
each of you a handout on this as well. As represented on the
horizontal axis, we have defined five stages of architecture
maturity beginning with Stage 1, the lowest level, and
progressing to Stage 5, the highest level. We have also
surveyed 116 Federal agencies on their architecture efforts and
using their responses, have rated and aggregated agencies of
like maturity levels as represented on the vertical axis.
As you can see, the state of maturity can best be described
as work in progress with much left to be accomplished. In
particular, I would draw your attention to the fact that about
one-half of the agencies are only at Stage 1, meaning either
there is no commitment to developing an architecture or the
architecture efforts underway are ad hoc and do not provide a
recipe for success. Why is this the case? Our survey results
point to four interrelated reasons, all of which can be traced
to a lack of agency head commitment sponsorship.
These are: one, lack of funding; two, limited management
understanding; three, parochialism; and four, a shortage of
skilled staff. Ironically, these are some of the very
challenges that OMB faces in implementing its portfolio of 24
initiatives being pursued under the President's management
agenda to expand e-government.
Which brings me to the answer to the question to the third
question our testimony addresses, the role of enterprise
architecture in implementing e-government. As we testified last
year, past mistakes in implementing IT solutions remind us of
the risk going forward. The key to successfully mitigating
these risks is in employing proven management practices. These
practices can be viewed as the horse that pulls the cart
containing the e-government initiatives.
Historically, however, agencies have all too often put the
cart before the horse, forging ahead on IT investments before
putting these management practices in place. OMB's success in
implementing its e-government initiatives depends in large part
on not letting this happen. One of these practices, and I
underscore one, is using enterprise architecture.
To its credit, OMB's e-government strategy includes an
architecture project. The real challenge, however, lies ahead
in actually developing, validating and enforcing the
architectures which brings me to the answer to the final
question addressed in our testimony, OMB's leadership steps.
Clearly, OMB plays a critical leadership role in achieving
enterprise architecture and e-government progress. Central to
this role will be ensuring that both agency specific
investments in IT and governmentwide investments in e-
government are made within the context of these architectures.
To date, OMB has demonstrated leadership on both fronts but
the importance of these investments requires it to go further.
Accordingly, we have made recommendations to OMB aimed at
strengthening its enterprise architecture leadership to the
adoption of the maturity framework we developed, use of the
baseline agency architecture information that we collected, and
periodic maturation reporting, all with the intent of bringing
greater attention and thus meaningful progress to this very
important area.
While these recommendations were made within the context of
agency specific architectures and investments, they have
applicability to OMB-led e-government initiatives as well. We
encourage OMB to move swiftly in accepting and implementing
these recommendations.
This concludes my statement. I will be happy to answer any
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hite follows:]
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Mr. Davis. Mr. Forman.
Mr. Forman. Thank you. Thank you also for your leadership
in e-government, cyber security and IT work force issues.
This hearing is particularly important because we believe
that the e-government efforts are critical to our ability to
run the government effectively and efficiently. We appreciate
your commitment and support in moving forward to leverage the
power of the Internet for Americans.
Before I get into the substance of my testimony, I need to
make sure the subcommittee understands that I don't serve in a
confirmed position within OMB. As a general policy, OMB usually
does not send officials in unconfirmed political positions to
testify. However, in this case, because OMB does not yet have a
Deputy Director for Management, the OMB Director decided it was
in the best interest of the administration to have me appear on
his behalf as a witness.
As you know, electronic government is one of the key
elements of the President's management and performance plan. It
is integral or integrated with, as we see it, the other
management initiatives because e-government facilitates
performance based budgeting, strategic management of human
capital, and financial management. In fact, if you were to put
those together, it is what corporations generally call
enterprise resource management.
At the same time, competitive sourcing has become a key
tool used by companies to rapidly acquire and integrate
information technology. We believe the combined effect of all
the initiatives pursued concurrently is far greater than the
mere sum of work on any independent initiatives.
For our e-government efforts, we have to keep in mind three
relevant lessons learned from e-business efforts in the
commercial world. First, complex transactions can be collapsed
and made simple using a combination of new business design and
Internet technology. It is not simple enough to do the
technology work. As was discussed, the business design is in
parallel.
Second, survival in the digital economy often requires
restructuring into integrated customer centered operations that
use both physical and on-line environments.
Third, an organization's most senior executives must manage
transformations strategically through commitments, setting
priorities, expectation, focus and measurement. Therefore, the
guiding principles for achieving our e-government vision are
about simplifying the process and unifying the operations to
better serve citizen needs and ultimately uncomplicating
government.
In late February, the Council for Excellence released its
updated Teeter poll of what Americans want from e-government.
As the chairman noted, Americans view e-government as
important. In fact, more than three-quarters of Internet
accessible Americans and more than half of all Americans
overall go on line today to interact with their government.
Moreover, the study found that 70 percent of Americans want
government to invest in making it easier to get services and
information.
Our strategy for doing this focuses on the four citizen
center groups, for individuals, what people wold call G to C,
focused on one-stop shops for citizens that create single, easy
points of entry to access high quality information and
services, for businesses what people would call G to B,
reducing the burden on business through use of the Internet.
This is not about building a government Web site but rather
being able to communicate with business in the language of e-
business largely x amount. For intergovernment or what people
would refer to as G to G, we must make it easier for States and
localities to meet the reporting requirements, provide better
performance measurement and easier access to grants and other
vertical information sharing initiatives. As Congressman Turner
pointed out, it is these G to G initiatives that are homeland
security related.
In intergovernmental, our internal efficiency and
effectiveness portfolio is using modern technology to rethink
internal processes and bringing modern e-business programs to
government and approaches to government.
E-government uses IT to improve Federal productivity by
enabling better interactions and coordination. Each opportunity
requires substantial changes in current bureaucratic
procedures. Each e-government initiative in our portfolio needs
to be based on a valid business case. It has to clearly
articulate the value both to the citizen and to the government,
has to provide for privacy and security, and provide a real
work plan for achieving the results.
We undertook an analysis of the opportunities in our e-
government strategy project, what many would call the
Quicksilver Project, a nickname we gave it during last summer.
That identified the initiatives as you mentioned. In addition,
we identified key barriers that have prevented successful
implementation of e-government and those are listed in my
testimony.
One of the key findings of the task force came from review
of the Federal enterprise architecture. Simply stated, the
enterprise architecture, in our view, describes how the
organization performs its work using the people, the business
processes, the data and the technology. In essence, our view of
the enterprise architecture that we need from the agencies and
to support the projects has to be a modernization blueprint,
the path as Mr. Hite said to get to where we need to go.
A task force major finding was that there is a significant
overlap and redundancy in the Federal business architecture.
With 19 out of 24 Cabinet level departments and agencies
reforming each major function in line of business of the
Federal Government. The task force found that this business
architecture redundancy creates excessive duplicative spending
on staff, IT and administration. Moreover, the task force's
assessment determined that the redundancy makes it hard to get
service while generating duplicative reporting and paperwork
burdens. In general, today's Federal Government business
architecture is expensive to operate and not customer centered.
Basic management principles tell us that the government
operating cost will go down and effectiveness will go up if we
make it simpler for citizens to get services. That is what we
need to focus on in the enterprise architecture.
Finally, I would like to call your attention to the
government structure we have put in my larger testimony and
highlight the fact that we have adopted modern portfolio
management practices to move forward in e-government,
leveraging the steering group that comprises the CIO Council,
CFO Council, Human Resources Management Council, Procurement
Executive Council members as well as line of business
membership. Norm Larenz, the newly named Chief Technology
Officer for the Federal Government, assists me in this regard
and oversees the Portfolio Management Office as well as the
enterprise architecture.
Also noted in my testimony what we are moving toward in the
Federal Government is the same best practice you will see in
modern communications who are Web-enabled, these component-
based architecture tools and techniques to address these issues
Mr. Hite has described.
Ultimately, what gets measured gets done and I have
included in my testimony the criteria that we use to measure
agency progress. Included in that is how well they work
together to support the integration across the silos in the
area of e-government.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Forman follows:]
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Mr. Davis. Thank you. I have a few questions. Mr. Hite, let
me start with you.
According to the figures you gave, there are 1,413 e-
government initiatives underway as of January 2001 and OMB
seems to be really pursuing 24, which is a drop in the bucket
when it comes to overall IT spending, which in 2000 will exceed
$48 billion according to OMB's projections. Can you comment on
the ability of one agency with a multitude of management and
budgetary responsibilities to effectively oversee these other
e-gov investments?
Mr. Hite. Mr. Chairman, as Clint Eastwood said, a man has
to know his limitations and I would defer to my colleague who
is our expert on e-government to respond to that.
Mr. Davis. Mr. McClure, thank you for being with us. Let
the record know Mr. McClure was sworn earlier.
Mr. McClure. I think you raise a good point, Mr. Chairman.
Mark has responsibilities that go beyond the 24 e-gov
initiatives being pursued under the President's management
agenda. There is a relatively substantial IT budget for the
Federal Government, $48 billion in 2002, going up to $53
billion in 2003. What we would like to see is some of the
things that have been done since Mark arrived as the use of
good oversight tools by OMB to determine whether the agencies
are pursuing best practices in some of the critical IT
management areas, including enterprise architecture, capital
planning and investment control, security, IT human capital.
I think we have seen movement in that direction as
exhibited both by the scorecard he alluded to that the
President is using to rate agency performance, much of the IT
being rated in the e-gov area, and second, the comprehensive
nature of the changes made to the A11 budget exhibits that all
the agencies use to submit their major IT submissions. These
require a level of detail that did not exist before to get at
some of the most vexing problems that we at GAO encounter when
we do our reviews, solid business cases, security requirements,
human capital needs, risk assessments, things that
traditionally we have seen as weaknesses in many of the
agencies we have reviewed.
I think the real answer is the resources and tools being
made available and analytical approaches being exercised by OMB
give frank feedback to the agencies on their performance in the
IT area.
Mr. Forman. Mr. Chairman, if I could add something?
Mr. Davis. Please, Mr. Forman.
Mr Forman. When we did the work last summer, indeed we
found about 370 ideas or concepts. Many of those projects were
already funded and out of the 24 we selected, on average I
would say there are 5 to 10 projects currently funded in that
list of 400 and some you mentioned that Mr. Hite identified.
We have a choice. We could let those 100 to 120 projects go
forward, we could add in another cross agency project and then
we would have 24 plus 110 to 120. Our decision was to forge
partnerships among the teams that were already investing in
these projects and adopt a component architecture type approach
that allows not to pursue independent activities but to join
their funding or join their assets around these common
initiatives.
I will give you a couple of examples. On-line rulemaking,
one of the issues that came out very clearly in the recent
Hart/Teeter survey is that people want more accountability in
government. That means they want to see the regulations and
rules that are being proposed and want to be able to comment on
those.
The agencies heard that and so if we have five, we have 25.
Actually, we have quite a bit more than that initiatives
underway to put rulemaking dockets on-line. There are five
major projects that we have identified with the business cases
using the methodologies Dr. McClure laid out. We don't need to
buy all those and the agencies don't need to continue
reinventing the wheel. So via the partnership for rulemaking
on-line, we are figuring out essentially who does what and we
are not going to invest in reinventing the wheel. We have to
get control on that and these are the 24 priorities and areas
we are going to focus on now.
Mr. Davis. Let me ask also, what is your position on OMB's
plans for component architecture for its e-government
initiatives versus a consolidated Federal architecture?
Mr. Hite. I would say it is difficult to answer that
question because I have yet to have the conversation with OMB
about the meaning of the word component. If component means or
equals e-government initiative in which case it would be an
architecture for each of the e-government initiatives, that
would be fully consistent with our position as to what an
enterprise represents. In fact, an enterprise can represent a
business area or mission area that transcends more than one
organization.
If component means cost based components that would be
integrated together to provide the e-government solution, I
would fully support using cost based solutions, cost based
components as the basis for introducing these e-government
capabilities. That is the wave of the future. There are
important management practices that go along with how you do
that, one of which is having the context in which those cost
applications will fit, that context is the architecture.
Mr. Davis. Mr. Forman, the President, OMB and you have
demonstrated remarkable management progress in recognizing the
Federal Government's IT challenges and implementing reforms
through the budget processes. In the future, probably way in
the future, when the President is no longer the head of the
executive branch, what statutory or executive branch mechanisms
are or will be in place to guarantee that these reforms will
continue to be managed effectively from one administration to
the next?
Mr. Forman. I think that is an excellent question. In fact,
I and some colleagues I worked with on the staff were remarking
about that. I am making extensive use of the Act and some of
the vast authorities endowed on the Director of OMB. Why that
was not done before, I don't know. Clearly we are living in a
confluence of events now. The technology supports it, the
interconnectivity of society has grown dramatically over the
last 2 years, the whole notion of component based approaches in
architectures, modular approaches, the battle that is going on
between Microsoft and the Java community right now becoming
relevant to the business world and the fact that government is
increasing its investment when the business world is decreasing
creates unique opportunities but when you get right down to it,
using the authority that is laid out in the Act and that is at
the heart of what I am finding to be the key to success.
Mr. Davis. Let me yield to Mr. Turner.
Mr. Turner. Mr. McClure, as you know, Mr. Davis and I met
on occasion with some State and local officials talking about
what they perceived to be barriers to the use of information
technology and implementing e-government. You are familiar, I
know, with some of those issues. It would be helpful to us if
you could identify for us what in your opinion are the existing
Federal laws or regulations that do represent legitimate
barriers to State and local governments' ability to implement
effective e-government policies?
Mr. McClure. I can't claim to speak for all the laws and
their impact in that area but I will tell you I think it
requires a real partnership between the CIO Council at the
Federal level, OMB and the Congress and State and local needs
in the e-gov area so that we can ensure that on-line government
and services being delivered to citizens and businesses at any
level of government are as connected as possible.
There is work in this area that is underway. The Federal
CIO Council is working closely with the National Association of
State CIOs to try to identify and overcome some of the
technical barriers, managerial barriers, approaches, if you
will, to how things are being managed in an intergovernmental
fashion to try to produce more seamless service to the citizens
regardless of where the service is being provided from. We have
funding issues involved and how the money appropriated by the
Congress is to be used; we have traditional cultural turf,
ownership issues that have to be dealt with, but in the long
run, I think what we need is a real identification of not only
the barriers but the opportunities in those quick hit areas
where services to citizens and businesses can be done in an
integrated fashion across government lines. Some of that is
proceeding. A lot of it has to do with resources, where the
resources will come from, to fund many of those initiatives.
Mr. Turner. We have seen examples of progress in some
States, perhaps even progress exceeding our Federal Government.
I know Mr. Davis and I both have concerns that we want to give
our States flexibility to continue to move forward and not be a
hindrance in what we put into law or policy.
Several members requested a report some months ago which
the GAO prepared regarding the Immigration and Naturalization
Service. I don't recall who prepared that report within the
GAO. Are you familiar with the report I am referring to?
Mr. McClure. I think Mr. Hite actually prepared it.
Mr. Hite. There are a number of reports we prepared on INS.
The one in particular you are referring to, if you could give
me a clue as to the subject?
Mr. Turner. I may have a copy of it in just a minute.
Mr. Hite. I personally have done reports recently dealing
with INS' lack of an enterprise architecture and their lack of
IT investment management capability.
Mr. Turner. I may have a copy here. I will direct your
attention to it in a moment.
Mr. Forman, in the meantime, have you had an opportunity,
particularly in light of the recent revelations, to take a look
at the INS and its architecture, and what we might do to
rapidly move to improve it?
Mr. Forman. My review is actually supposed to be reported
to me tomorrow with a set of recommendations. I don't have
detailed analysis that I can answer that question with. Let me
give you some insight on the types of things we are looking at.
First of all, as Mr. Hite said, they are not one of the ones we
would consider as successful in enterprise architecture. I
think the GAO review lays out key insights and we are using
those insights. I think that is an important piece of work.
Let me also say that this issue is not unique or will not
be solved by just the INS. The issue of border security
requires getting a handle on our business architecture as it
relates to border protection. That is something that extends
beyond the INS, something Governor Ridge and the Homeland
Security Office is looking at as well as the work that is going
on in what is generally called the information sharing
initiatives as one of the four major areas reported in the
budget for homeland security.
Mr. Turner. I noticed the President's budget requests $20
million for the E-Government Fund which as we know is the fund
to pay for interagency initiatives in e-government. Last year,
the same request was made and you received $5 million. Do you
have hope or prospects that maybe we can get that number up to
the $20 million this year in light of the circumstances we find
ourselves in?
Mr. Forman. We actually requested $45 million this year.
The issue here, and the Director of OMB laid this out to the
Appropriations Subcommittee last week, is all 24 of these
initiatives, and indeed there are many more, represent multiple
funded projects. So the Congress has a choice and we too are
working this issue, of how many times do we want to fund the
same e-government effort. E-government forces us to look across
agencies and focus on how we are delivering that line of
business or service to the citizen.
I believe this is the fundamental issue in the
appropriations process for e-government and I believe that just
as you have a focus across the agencies on e-government and
other government reform issues, similarly the Appropriations
Committee has to look across the subcommittees and take on
essentially funding in e-government initiative once not agency
by agency or department by department and that is essentially
what we have laid out. Let us fund the key components of these
initiatives once and then deduct up front, if you will, by not
paying for five to ten times that many initiatives subcommittee
by subcommittee. It is a tradeoff that has to be made at the
full committee level.
Mr. Turner. I suggested in my opening statement that the
proper and efficient implementation of information technology
in our agencies is now a national security issue, a personal
safety issue. Heretofore, prior to September 11th, we always
spoke of it in terms of efficiency in government, making
government user friendly, and so forth. It seems to me in light
of September 11th, there should be a new urgency regarding
information technology in government. I am not sure that I have
heard it expressed in those terms very often.
Mr. Chairman, you will have to forgive me for this, but it
is almost like what Enron did for campaign finance reform.
September 11th and the terrorist threat should give impetus to
emphasis on information technology. When I heard Mr. Siebel's
testimony a few weeks ago, it caused me to realize that though
the American people have not blamed their government and the
failure of government for September 11th, the link between
those events and the lack of information coordination would
tell us if that is ever repeated, the American people may very
well hold their government accountable for that next incident.
I think it is very important for us to speak in terms of
national security, personal safety when we make the case to
move forward more rapidly through the proper application of
information technology. I hope you will do that and carry that
message forward and the administration will carry that message
forward and if you do so, I feel much more confident that your
budget request will be honored by the Congress.
Mr. Forman. I appreciate that. Indeed, we view the
government and homeland security as very closely related. Even
though the government to government portfolio was defined
before the events of September 11th, four out of the five
initiatives are homeland security and are embraced as such in
the budget as what we call vertical information sharing.
If I can amplify your point and also embrace the chairman's
composition of the hearing today, I think one thing that is
clear is this as much an enterprise and business architecture
issue as it is an IT issue. I will give you some very simple
concepts.
After the events of September 11th when Governor Ridge came
on board, the President and Governor Ridge said we need to
leverage the technology to address this issue. They made that
very clear and about 1,000 vendors and multiple government
agencies showed up on my doorstep, everybody wanting to share
information or having tools to share information.
One company showed up that said, we can make you do
something with the information and that is the business process
issue, how do you work together, not just to share information,
but to improve the quality of the process. So we adopted two
very simple measures of merit to look at these IT investments
but they are business process related metrics.
First is can you increase the response time? To me that is
the measure of success that we need to be held accountable for
delivering things like e-government and homeland security. The
other is quality of the decisions--are we getting better
decisions faster, are we able to respond to threats faster?
Mr. Turner. I have no doubt that we can make progress. The
chairman's hearing we had a few weeks ago brought together many
folks from the private sector. We got just a taste of some of
those ideas that I am sure you have heard about many times
over. I am hopeful that this opportunity will not be lost and I
think it is critical to our safety and our security.
Mr. Davis. Mr. Forman, can you comment on concerns raised
by some folks in the private sector that government is
competing with industry in developing and implementing e-
government initiatives?
Mr. Forman. I don't see any competition at all. There is a
generational gap that I think we are getting through, hope we
are getting through. In the e-government space, there are so
many different opportunities and ways to partner with industry
but one very simple way is to have people build a branded store
for us. For example, take the concept of Hot Jobs or Monster,
they build a branded storefront for recruitment for many large
companies. You would go to a company and apply for their job
and the job part of their portal never realizing that you are
actually at Hot Jobs or Monster.com. Then you can click back
and look at the stock reports or whatever. You are operating
within what is called a branded storefront or branded portal.
That is the type of thing we see. It is a faster way to get
things, proven, you can specify security, specify services but
you don't have to build anything.
Mr. Davis. I want to thank you all for being here. I will
dismiss this panel at this point.
We will call our next panel: Mr. Holcomb, Ms. Stouffer, Ms.
Canales, Dr. Callahan, Ms. Barnes and Dr. Blanchard. We will
take a 2-minute break while you set up.
[Recess.]
Mr. Davis. The second panel is ready.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Davis. I will start with Mr. Holcomb and move straight
down the line. If you can keep your testimony to 5 minutes, we
have most of our questions pre-determined on this as we have
gone through your testimony and it will make it run a little
more efficiently.
So, Mr. Holcomb, please proceed.
STATEMENTS OF LEE HOLCOMB, CIO, CO-CHAIR, FEDERAL ARCHITECTURE
AND INFRASTRUCTURE COMMITTEE, FEDERAL CIO COUNCIL, NASA; DEBRA
STOUFFER, DEPUTY CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER FOR IT REFORM, CO-
CHAIR, BEST PRACTICES COMMITTEE, FEDERAL CIO COUNCIL, HUD; MAYI
CANALES, DEPUTY CIO, E-GOVERNMENT PORTFOLIO COORDINATOR,
FEDERAL CIO COUNCIL, DEPARTMENT OF TREASURY; LAURA CALLAHAN,
DEPUTY CIO, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY CENTER, CO-CHAIR, WORKFORCE
& HUMAN CAPITAL FOR IT, FEDERAL CIO COUNCIL, DEPARTMENT OF
LABOR; JANET BARNES, CIO, OPM; AND LLOYD BLANCHARD, CHIEF
OPERATING OFFICER, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT & ADMINISTRATION,
OFFICE OF THE ASSOCIATE DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR, SMALL BUSINESS
ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Holcomb. I am pleased to appear before the subcommittee
today to discuss enterprise architectures. I will briefly
summarize my written statement.
I want to thank the chairman and Mr. Turner for your
continued support and encouragement toward electronic
government.
Development and use of enterprise architectures at the
individual agency and Federal levels is a key component in the
effective management of information technology investments. I
have serve as the CIO for NASA since November 1997 and since
February 1999, I have also served as the Co-Chair of the
Architecture Infrastructure Committee of the Federal CIO
Council. Mr. John Gilligan, the CIO from the Air Force, is my
Co-Chair.
In the context of an individual agency, an enterprise
architecture establishes the agencywide road map to achieve the
agency's mission through optimal performance of its core
business processes within an efficient information technology
framework. The history of Federal IT investments provides many
examples of failed projects which lack linkage between business
needs and the underlying IT technical solutions. These failed
IT projects in most cases did not benefit from an enterprise
architecture to guide the IT investment.
In my remarks today I plan to speak briefly about how the
Federal CIO Council has sought to avoid those consequences
through enterprise architecture related products and through
education and training efforts.
The Federal Architecture Working Group of the Architecture
and Infrastructure Committee is one of the most productive
working groups in the Federal IT community. The working group
has significantly influenced the enterprise architecture
efforts of governmental and private entities, especially
through their publications.
The Federal Architecture Working Group has partnered with
OMB and the General Accounting Office to produce the Federal
Enterprise Architecture Framework. This framework is available
at the CIO Web site, www.cio.gov.
The framework provides agencies with definitive guidance on
creating and using enterprise architectures. It can be used by
anyone considering or actively developing an enterprise
architecture. The Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework
provides a road map for agencies seeking to transition from a
current architecture to a target architecture. Mr. Hite did an
excellent job of defining an enterprise architecture in the
prior panel.
In addition to publishing formal guidance, the Architecture
and Infrastructure Committee provides and supports education
and training initiatives addressing enterprise architectures in
general, as well as specific subtopics such as Section 508 of
the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, public key infrastructure and
extensive mark-up language or XMl.
Reflective of the positive momentum which enterprise
architecture efforts have achieved in the Federal sector, the
private has begun offering Federal enterprise architecture
training courses. These programs recognize that Federal
agencies require qualified staff to implement enterprise
architecture. One example of this is the certification program
in enterprise architectures that is being offered by the
California State University system. The Federal Architecture
Working Group has been asked to support that certification by
acting as a forum for setting certification standards and
assisting in updating the content of the certification program.
In conclusion, as we heard in the first panel, the Federal
Government remains in the early stages of the development and
use of enterprise architectures. One would not build a building
or an aerospace vehicle without architectural drawings.
Similarly, the Government should set as a goal establishing an
enterprise architecture prior to investing in a major IT
program.
I would like to offer four observations and recommendations
for your consideration. First, the Federal CIO Council's
Architecture Working Group with the participation of GAO and
OMB has laid a strong technical foundation in the discipline or
enterprise architectures as applied to the public sector.
Second, the OMB should continue to assess and report on
agency level development and use of enterprise architectures.
Third, Federal agencies should address the natural tendency
for internal bureaus to become compartmentalized and
stovepiped. Often the largest impediment to enterprise
architecture efforts is the tension between program managers
who are trying to achieve a specific task and CIOs who are
trying to build a more cohesive and strategic IT foundation.
The OMB could play a role in encouraging these broader
attitudes which are crucial to the successful application of
enterprise architectures at both the agency and Federal
Government levels.
Fourth, we should collectively work to achieve the proper
balance of resources allocated to enterprise architecture at
the agency and cross agency levels. There is clearly evidence
of a positive momentum in Federal agency use of enterprise
architectures. With the support of OMB and Congress, this
momentum can be sustained to ensure enterprise architectures
play a major role in improving the performance and
accountability of IT investments at both the agency and
governmentwide levels.
I would welcome any questions you might have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Holcomb follows:]
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Mr. Davis. Thank you.
Ms. Stouffer.
Ms. Stouffer. On behalf of Secretary Mel Martinez, thank
you for the opportunity to discuss HUD's effort to improve the
effectiveness and cost efficiency of departmental programs, to
the development and deployment of a HUD enterprise-wide
architecture.
I am going to limit my remarks to enterprise architecture
at HUD and the need for continued congressional and OMB support
for enterprise architecture development.
I serve as HUD's Deputy CIO for IT Reform and I co-chair
the Federal CIO Council's Committee on Best Practices. In early
February 2002, I accepted a temporary detail as the Federal
Enterprise Architecture Program Manager.
Let me first discuss HUD's approach to enterprise
architecture. At one time, HUD's IT environment consisted of
more than 200 stovepipe systems, many of which were very
independent of one another and didn't talk to one another. The
systems carried out redundant processes and relied on obsolete
technology, contained incompatible data and were incapable of
supporting enterprisewide decisionmaking.
HUD completed the initial development of an enterprise
architecture and a baseline architecture and target
architectures in the areas of grants and financial management
in January 2001. HUD also developed a dynamic Web-based tool to
track and analyze the layers of its enterprise architecture and
the relationships between those layers.
This enterprise architecture management system is helping
to identify opportunities where collaboration, data sharing and
process simplification can lead to improved productivity,
efficiency, effectiveness and service delivery. Because of
HUD's success, EAMS is currently being used and evaluated by
approximately ten other Federal organizations.
HUD's enterprise architecture is beginning to drive its IT
capital planning and investment management process. The
selection of initiatives to be included in the Department's IT
portfolio is based upon a thorough business case that includes
several architectural related considerations. As a result, its
enterprisewide approach to IT investment management, HUD is now
pursuing several cross program enterprisewide or cross
governmental initiatives.
Let me now discuss HUD's leadership in the area of e-gov.
Two examples of HUD's e-gov success stories include FHA
connection and the capability to conduct on-line loan auctions.
FHA connection was developed by HUD to support electronic
commerce between FHA and the community of approved FHA lenders
and service providers. Using a single user ID a business
partner can submit official business transactions to a variety
of automated systems.
In the area of FHA single family loan origination, more
than 90 percent of the business transactions processed by HUD
come from business partners using FHA connection. There are
currently 9,000 lenders and 100,000 users of the system.
In addition, last April, HUD conducted its first Web-based
loan sale. The $111 million auction was the largest Internet
loan sale ever conducted by the Federal Government. The auction
loans provided funds for the rehabilitation of homes in
distressed neighborhoods at below market rates. By empowering
bidders through an advanced loan trading system, HUD increased
bidder interest in the sale and maximized its sale proceeds.
Because of its leadership in the area of enterprise
architecture and e-gov, HUD is the partnering agency on 15 of
the President's e-gov initiatives.
With regard to the security of its IT investments, HUD is
also implementing a methodology to comprehensively assess the
current HUD security landscape through its enterprise
architecture. With respect to security and privacy, HUD will
make no distinction between e-gov and non-e-gov systems. The
methodology will guide the Department in identifying sensitive
information being collected and the processes and policies for
handling this information.
Finally, let me comment on how the Federal budget process
can support enterprise architecture development. Based on my
experience at HUD and as Co-Chair of the Best Practices
Committee, I believe it is critical that OMB and Congress
continue to encourage agencies to make progress in this area.
Establishing an enterprise architecture requires participation
from all agency organizations. Providing, verifying, updating
and analyzing the enormous amount of information takes a
significant amount of time and requires a widespread,
multidisciplined effort. Continued improvement requires
perseverance and the support of critical oversight
organizations such as Congress and OMB.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Stouffer follows:]
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Mr. Davis. Thank you very much.
Ms. Canales.
Ms. Canales. I would like to thank the chairman and the
other members of the subcommittee for your continued support
and interest in the improvement of information technology
performance and accountability in the Federal Government. I
will briefly summarize my written testimony.
I serve as the Deputy CIO for the Treasury Department. In
this role I provide strategic direction, oversight and
management of all information technology programs within the
Treasury Department and its bureaus. I also serve on the
Federal CIO Council Executive Committee as the E-Government
Coordinator.
In the Treasury Department, forums such as the Treasury
Chief Information Officer's Council, the Capital Investment
Review Board and the newly formed Chief Officer's Council,
address enterprisewide issues facing the Department and its
bureaus. I have provided a handout with my testimony of the
structure within the Treasury Department to address enterprise
decisions and strategic planning.
The Treasury CIO Council provides the strategic technical
direction and evaluation technical solutions considered on an
enterprise basis. Business cases for enterprise solutions are
evaluated and approved by the Capital Investment Review Board.
The Chief Officer's Council is designed to act as a steering
group adopting initiatives and developing high level
departmental benchmarks. Its membership is comprised of chief
information and financial officers, human resource officers and
procurement executives.
Treasury has more direct contact with the public than most
Federal agencies. To mention a few initiatives that are in my
written submission, Treasury is implementing an enterprise
human resource system, the Treasury communications enterprise,
the IRS business systems modernization, the automated
commercial environment with customs, the savings bond
connection and the payment application modernization under
Financial Management Service. These are just a few of the
success stories we have in the department.
The task at hand now is to continue the growth of e-
government and to manage the transfer as a team across
government. At Treasury we are using enterprise architecture,
EA, to create a unified approach to business solutions. We are
leveraging EA to align technology to the business needs to
allow sound business decisions, making IT more accountable to
the business management.
We have a Department EA Working Group that reports directly
to the CIO Council. Treasury also has the lead project, Safe
COM. Safe COM will accelerate the implementation of
interoperable public safety, wireless communications at all
levels of government throughout the Nation. The goals of the
program are to save lives through immediate public safety
communications and coordination. By addressing local, State and
Federal interoperability, we will be able to provide effective
public safety and emergency support communications.
Any legislation considered should focus on improving the
coordination and implementation of IT efforts across functional
boundaries. Any legislation that would reduce the burden on
citizens to provide information is a positive step. The
Government programs that share common elements of information
could be vastly improved with stronger authority to enforce
interagency and intergovernmental cooperation.
OMB's memorandum funding information systems investments
establishes eight decision criteria OMB uses to evaluate all
major information systems investments. These rules initiated
fundamental changes in the management of IT resources and
provided the underpinning in the promotion of enterprise
solutions.
Legislative guidelines such as Klinger-Cohen Act further
underscore the importance for the effective management of IT
resources. The next step is to the capital planning process
across agency boundary and into citizen-centered investments.
The Treasury CIO Council has identified security, privacy
and critical infrastructure protection as a key initiative. The
Council established several committees with cross bureau
representation to address security issues for the Department.
Policies and practices are shared and implemented across
the Department. The committees have established enterprise
performance metrics to ensure that effective security controls
are developed for every major system or application within the
Department. There is a plan in place to certify and accredit
all major systems. We have established a computer security
incident response capability. Periodic system security reviews
are performed by the Office of Information Security.
The Treasury CIO Council approved and adopted the IRS'
security assessment framework as a standard for Treasury.
Treasury also developed a Web-enabled, agencywide information
security awareness course.
I would like to thank the subcommittee for the support it
has given to e-government. Without your support, we would not
have been able to achieve the national success we enjoy today.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you this
afternoon. This concludes my formal remarks and I would be
happy to respond to any questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Canales follows:]
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Mr. Davis. Dr. Callahan.
Ms. Callahan. I appreciate you inviting me here today to be
able to describe how the Department of Labor is streamlining
and strengthening its information resources infrastructure for
the purpose of improving the effectiveness and efficiency of
our operations and our programs.
As you are aware, the Department of Labor is a
decentralized organization. Therefore, taking an enterprisewide
management approach is critical to making sure that our
information infrastructure is not only efficient and responsive
but most importantly ensuring that we have the appropriate
infrastructure in place to improve service delivery to our
customers. In this way, the Department of Labor can truly
become a digital department.
The specifics pertaining to the Department's
accomplishments and progress have been detailed in my written
testimony and I would like to summarize some of the key
highlights.
In May 2001, the Department of Labor created an e-
government strategy that articulates a vision of guiding
principles and provides the framework in order for us to manage
through this time of change and transformation. We focus on
four key programmatic areas as far as managing change with that
strategy: customer relationship management to truly ensure we
have a citizen-centered government, in addition to
organizational capabilities which is where we deal with our
people policies and procedures, as well as another key focus
area enterprise architecture; and most importantly, something
that crosses through all aspects and focus areas, security and
privacy to ensure that we maintain the citizens' trust in the
work we perform and the information we process and handle.
To implement the vision, the Department has established a
several pronged strategy to include the management and
budgetary framework necessary in order to govern enterprisewide
issues. The structure that we have in place includes a multi-
tiered investment review board that is led through the
Secretary and her strong leadership. In addition, we have a
capital planning and investment control process as well as we
have established a central IT crosscut fund which allows us to
focus into portfolio management areas. The portfolio management
areas include enterprise architecture, common office
administration suites, common management systems that are
enterprisewide as well as security and privacy. Those
initiatives and security and privacy cut across all aspects of
our investment portfolios.
When an initiative is being considered for investment it
undergoes a very rigorous process as part of the capital
planning and investment control activities. Once it is
selected, we then monitor it very rigorously through a
quarterly review process to ensure that not only the investment
itself but the portfolio as a whole is achieving our objectives
in accordance with cost, schedule and performance goals.
As a result of these efforts, we have been able to realize
cost avoidance savings. Particularly, we have been able to
achieve a 40 percent reduction in our potential enterprise
architecture expenditures. In one particular example is our
common office administration suite in which the initial cost if
each agency were to handle this in a traditional stovepiped
approach, it would have been an expenditure of $33.7 million.
By consolidating the efforts at the enterprise level and
managing it through the Investment Review Board structure under
the leadership of the Secretary, we have been able to reduce
the cost down to $26 million. This essentially is a $7.3
million savings or a 21 percent reduction in cost avoidance.
Building on our initiatives, we have established a very
strong enterprise architecture program in which we handle our
enterprise architecture activities in a phased approach. The
Department of Labor is the only department in the Federal
Government that has a federated enterprise architecture model,
one that is designed to work in a decentralized environment.
With that, we have established our functional levels of
business, our data architecture, a mission critical
applications architecture and a technology baseline.
We also function under nine enterprise architecture guiding
principles, 37 standards and a technical reference model to
ensure investments are closing the gap and moving us toward the
target of where we want to be. In order to manage our
enterprise architecture technology reference model, we also
have a standards life cycle process in place to ensure that we
are dynamic and flexible and can take advantage of industry
revolutions and novel and emerging technologies in a way that
makes sense to a minor business with our technology.
Our enterprisewide initiatives at the Department level have
enabled us to be positioned to be able to lead a very important
e-government initiative, one of the 24. The eligibility
assistance on-line initiative which is now called Gov Benefits,
is an initiative in which the Department of Labor is a managing
partner.
We are looking at the opportunity of not only employing
enterprise architecture activities at our department level, but
across the Federal Government through this particular
initiative, in particular the eligibility assistance on-line
initiative is being hosted at First Gov, not at the Department
of Labor. This management decision enables us to take advantage
of the technological advances that have been realized through
the First Gov Initiative without creating a duplication of
effort.
This allows us to establish the fundamental processes and
foundation in place to support the administration's goal of
unification and simplification and mostly importantly, to
collect information once we use it rather than place additional
burden on the public.
As we manage our change and as we continue to transform
ourselves, we are looking forward to incentives in the
appropriations process to ensure that agencies are encouraged
to collaborate across traditional boundaries and with that, an
entire business transaction receives the resource requirements
necessary to ensure that it is successful across traditional
agency boundaries.
These activities coupled with an industry best practice as
far as a self sustaining enterprise architecture will encourage
more entrpreneurialship within the Federal Government and
enable us to continue to foster collaboration across agencies
which will be key
to our success as we move forward during this exciting time of
transformation.
This concludes my comments and I look forward to answering
your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Callahan follows:]
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Mr. Davis. Thank you.
Ms. Barnes.
Ms. Barnes. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today
to update yo on our e-government initiative and the application
of enterprise architecture at the Office of Personnel
Management.
As you know, the President has a bold focus management
agenda designed to deliver citizen centered, results oriented,
market driven government to the American people and the
Director of OPM is committed to reorienting the focus of our
agency to achieve those goals.
OPM is the managing partner for five e-government
initiatives. All of them focus on improving internal efficiency
and effectiveness of the Federal Government. Our initiatives,
which include e-training, e-clearance, recruitment one stop,
enterprise human resources integration, and e-HR payroll affect
all agencies cutting across the entire Federal Government.
Accordingly, we need to be concerned with two levels of
enterprise architecture, the one guiding information technology
investment supporting OPM, and the governmentwide enterprise
architecture being developed by OMB.
In addition to high level views of our business processes
and information flows, OPM's enterprise architecture includes
the concept of a single enterprise network for all of OPM, one
consolidated data center, technical standards, a planned
agencywide technology refreshment cycle and a structured system
development methodology.
Our enterprise architecture has played a critical role in
helping us evolve technology in a cost effective direction. It
has been a driving force in establishing our quality assurance
program, implementing infrastructure upgrades and addressing
the importance of security and privacy.
Capitalizing on the strengths in our enterprise
architecture, OPM's e-government initiatives will play an
integral role in streamlining and improving procedures for
moving Federal employees through their employment life cycle.
In each phase of that life cycle, OPM will use these
initiatives to remove redundancy, reduce response time,
eliminate paperwork and improve coordination among Federal
agencies.
To achieve OPM's vision, its e-government initiatives will
seamlessly integrate with each other. OPM's vision for its e-
government initiatives is in fact based on that employee life
cycle, beginning with recruitment, continuing through all
aspects of employment, and culminating with retirement.
The core of this process is the enterprise human resources
integration initiative or E-HRI which will provide for the
electronic movement of H.R. data across the Federal Government.
E-HRI will act as a central hub connecting all of the OPM
initiatives and streamlining government processes. In addition,
a two-way communication process between E-HRI and agency H.R.
systems will allow E-HRI to share its data among the agencies
and augment its information through data entered through the
various agency systems.
The employee life cycle begins with the recruitment and
hiring process. Recruitment one-stop will serve as the initial
collection point for a variety of personnel data that
subsequently will be used in all of the OPM e-government
initiatives. Once the employment phase begins, the recruitment
one-stop system will pass relevant data to the E-HRI system as
the foundation for an official personnel folder.
E-clearance will offer support during this phase by
facilitating the clearance request process for providing
electronic access to clearance information we already have.
After applications are hired, during the employment phase of
the life cycle, the systems supporting E-HRI will be updated
with the latest clearance status of employees through the E-
clearance system.
The E-training system will be able to share data with E-HRI
to help formulate employee training plans and track their
progress. Additionally, the product of the payroll
consolidation effort or E-HR-Payroll will share appropriate
data with E-HRI to ensure up to date and accurate information.
OPM's initiatives will facilitate a smooth transition to
retirement when employees decide to leave the Federal
Government. E-HRI will forward appropriate information to the
retirement processing system to ensure that Federal Government
retirees get paid promptly and accurately.
Clearly OPM has a vision for how these initiatives will
work together but because these are interagency initiatives, we
will be guided by the governmentwide enterprise architecture
being developed by OMB as we move forward.
In closing, we are pleased to be leading the Federal
Government's efforts to unify and simplify a number of human
resources functions through the wise use of technology.
However, we understand this is not just a technology challenge.
Change management, the willingness to look for and use best of
breed examples in the public and private sector and creative
approaches to resolving longstanding process complexities will
be equally important if we are to fully achieve our objectives.
Thank you for inviting me to be here today and I would be
happy to respond to any questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Barnes follows:]
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Mr. Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Blanchard.
Mr. Blanchard. Thank you for inviting the Small Business
Administration to testify on its role as the managing partner
for the Business Compliance, Assistance One Stop Initiative.
I am the Chief Operating Officer for the SBA, charged with
the responsibility of implementing the President's management
agenda at SBA. Joining me is Larry Barrett, SBA CIO and Dr. Jim
Van Wert, SBA Senior Advisor for Policy Planning and the E-
Government Project Manager for creating the Business Compliance
One-Stop.
Small businesses repeatedly stress their concerns about the
burden of laws and regulations. SBA's Office of Advocacy
estimates that complying with laws and regulations costs small
firms nearly half a trillion dollars in the year 2000 or $7,000
per employee for firms with less than 20 employees.
Few electronic tools exist to enable small businesses to
cope with the myriad of laws and regulations that affect them
at all levels of government. With this in mind, SBA launched
businesslaw.gov in December 2001. We are leading the effort to
build a governmentwide business compliance assistance one-stop
to present a single face of government to small businesses
making it easier for all 25 million businesses to find,
understand and comply with these laws and regulations.
The President's fiscal year 2003 budget for SBA includes $5
million to support the project activities of its eight
participating Federal partners and other State and local
government partners.
As the managing partner on this project, SBA will be
accountable for project management, developing the enterprise
architecture and locating private sector consultants who will
develop the modules and assist in overseeing the effort.
SBA will begin by targeting several industries across four
compliance functional areas: the environment, workplace health
and safety, employment and taxation. The goal is to enable all
businesses to electronically register their businesses, receive
tax ID numbers, and do licensing and permitting on-line. SBA
will buildupon businesslaw.gov which today is a library of
legal and regulatory business information. The Business
Compliance One-Stop can be thought of as the librarian. It goes
beyond simply providing information; it offers services and
solutions through interactive guides and on-line transactions.
SBA is well positioned internally as it is already made
significant strides in creating an open systems technology
environment supporting the interoperability of technologies and
systems within and outside the SBA. SBA has also been a leader
i providing cross-agency information and services via the
Internet as exemplified by the CIO Council Award for Government
to Business announced just yesterday.
Nevertheless, SBA must confront a number of technical
issues to successfully implement the Business Compliance One-
Stop. For example, a cross agency platform must be developed
without dictating the data bases and applications that Federal,
State and local agencies use. This platform must work with
existing technologies but must also provide the Web services
infrastructure that minimizes system development. It must be
open and secure while providing maximum flexibility for
participating agencies.
The Business Compliance One-Stop will save businesses time
and money by reducing their legal and regulatory burden. this
will improve compliance with laws and regulations affecting
their operations and thereby reducing Government's cost for
enforcement and compliance activities.
Finally and most importantly, the Business Compliance One-
Stop will make the Federal Government more accessible to its
citizens, unifying and simplifying the delivery of needed
services will result in a more cost effective government that
is citizen-centered, market-based and results-driven. With
leadership resources, the right industry partners and a lot of
persistence, we can transform our public institutions into more
accessible and responsible organizations.
This is what Congress asks, the President demands and
citizens expect.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear here today and I
will be happy to answer your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Blanchard follows:]
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Mr. Davis. Let me start with Ms. Canales. In your
testimony, you mentioned that many government programs that
share common elements could be vastly improved with stronger
authority to enforce inter-agency and inter-governmental
cooperation. Do you think the Federal Government needs a
Federal CIO?
Ms. Canales. I think what we have done to date with Mark
Forman as the Associate Director for IT and E-Government has
come a long way toward what the Federal Government needs. We
need somebody at the Presidential level taking responsibility
and accountability for the movement toward e-government and
technology issues across the Government. We need somebody with
authority at OMB to help agencies deal with budget issues.
Budget issues were the mechanisms for us to fund cross-agency
projects are not there for a single agency. If Labor and HUD
and Treasury and OPM need to do a project together, we need
help pooling our resources, pooling existing structures that we
have built and funded, pooling resources for future development
cross projects that are not just 1 year but 5 years.
I think that what we have done to date has come a long way.
I think we should learn from what we have done to date and
possibly exist under this current situation for a while before
we go much further and create new structures within government.
Mr. Davis. Anybody else want to answer that?
Ms. Callahan, let me ask you. You note in your testimony
that Labor is the only department with government-wide IT
financing. Can you comment on why other agencies and
departments haven't pursued the same IT financial management
structure and why, do you think, it has worked at DOL?
Ms. Callahan. I am not able to comment on the other
departments and their decisionmaking but I can articulate how
it has helped us at the Department of Labor. Basically creating
a central IT fund has enabled us to break down the traditional
appropriations stovepiped approaches within the Department,
within our respective agencies by putting a central fund at the
department level that is managed through our Investment Review
Board and strictly through our capital planning process and its
rigors.
It allows us to have the flexibility and the dynamic
capability to respond to changes in the environment around us
to be able to basically invest in a more strategic way to
enable us to pick those initiatives that are going to be most
beneficial the Department in achieving its mission and make
sure those investments are proceeding ahead to benefit the
whole Department and leverage that benefit across the
organization instead of within a particular organization,
within a particular program.
Mr. Davis. Mr. Blanchard, in developing the Business
Compliance Assistance One-Stop Initiative, to what extent are
State and local government organizations participating up front
in formulating the enterprise architecture?
Mr. Blanchard. They have participated to a large extent up
front. We are working with the National Governors Association
as well as the States of Illinois, Washington and Mississippi
to develop the concept at least as it will relate to some of
their needs.
To answer your question, they have participated
significantly up front. I couldn't speak to the cost they have
incurred but surely they have incurred some in their previous
efforts in this area and in the attempt to integrate with this
particular initiative.
Mr. Holcomb. If I might add to that question from the
Federal Council's Architecture Committee, there has been
cooperation between NACO, the Federal and State CIOs on trying
to harmonize the Federal architecture guidance with that which
the States offer through NACO, so there has been some formal,
higher level, architectural collaboration between NACO and the
Federal CIO Council.
Mr. Davis. Mr. Holcomb, can you put into context how GAO's
EA maturity framework might fit in with the work of the
Architecture and Infrastructure Committee and also, would you
agree with GAO's recommendation that it be implemented
throughout the Federal Government?
Mr. Holcomb. First of all, we have piloted on a voluntary
basis the use of that framework within the committee structure.
We think it is a good framework. The one area I think we have
had some discussion about is at what level do you apply that
framework. You can apply it at the bureau level, you can apply
it at the full agency level and it becomes more powerful as you
raise it to the full agency level. I think it is a good
framework, that we can use it on a voluntary basis to do self
assessments, and I think it is a nice structure to use and
potentially OMB might want to consider using aspects of that.
Mr. Davis. Ms. Stouffer, what other factors besides EA do
you consider essential to IT management reforms?
Ms. Stouffer. Certainly enterprise architecture gives you
an understanding of what your business looks like and what the
aggregate businesses of the government look like. That enables
you to identify opportunities for reform and improvement. I
think also important is an exploration of the processes and the
people that contribute to the critical success factors that are
important to those lines of business and that not only
information technology but processes and organizations or
people are all considered in any solution that is proposed to
close performance gaps, to improve productivity and to improve
the service we deliver to the customer.
Mr. Davis. Ms. Barnes, OPM is supporting, I believe, five
of the President's Management Council selected e-gov
initiatives, which together are designed to streamline the
employment life cycle of the everyday Federal employee. How are
you working as an agency to ensure that all these initiatives
will be seamlessly interoperable with every other agency or
department in the Federal Government?
Ms. Barnes. We have an extremely active partner and
stakeholder group that has been involved from the beginning
when we started these initiatives. They are all contributing
from the very beginning of defining the vision for each of
these initiatives through the goals and objectives. Even though
work is proceeding because we understand where all of these are
headed, we continue to make sure the phrasing of this vision,
the goals and objectives really does reflect the work that is
being done. I think they are active and are very concerned
about the results of these efforts really going to improve the
whole H.R. process in the Federal Government.
I think with the active involvement with our partners, both
in the initial stages and as we continue through this process,
that we will ensure it meets the needs of all our agencies.
Mr. Davis. Just a general question to you all. What
obstacles do you anticipate in completing the initiatives by
the project deadlines in the E-Government Strategy Report?
Ms. Callahan. One of the challenges that we are facing is
from a management perspective dealing with cultural changes and
particularly the incentives necessary for cross agency
collaboration which I think has been echoed in a couple of
instances here today.
Incentives through the appropriations process would be
extremely beneficial to help break down some of the existing
barriers that promote the continued behavior and the cultural
environment to do things within a program within a particular
subcomponent, within a particular agency inside a department.
One of our challenges is elevating that type of activity to
an enterprisewide level so that we can all take benefit from it
and be able to enjoy the rewards the particular effort brings
forward and leverage the technology solutions and the lessons
learned universally instead of reinventing the wheel over and
over.
Mr. Blanchard. I would echo Ms. Callahan's comments related
to the institutional and cultural barriers that are probably
the most transient. Surely there are some technical barriers
that we face but the technology is there, whether it is in the
private sector of across government and it has been applied, so
we are continuing to draw on those best practices to overcome
some of the technical barriers.
With regard to the interagency organization, I think the
key for us in developing our business compliance portal is to
focus on businesses, not to create an ownership of this portal
that is agency-based but that is government-based and with the
focus being on the businesses that the portal serves. With us
simply being the managing partner and not the ownership or the
owner of this project, I think we are able to make sure the
participating partners all have a shared ownership in this
project.
Ms. Barnes. I think what the e-gov initiatives are really
about is transformational change which means not just an
enhancement to what we have today but thinking about new ways
of doing business. That can be a daunting task when you think
about doing it especially in my area across the Federal
Government. I think what is really important is that we
understand how to deliver some results that we can see and
appreciate the benefits they provide as a way of gaining
momentum into the change process.
I believe that starting and getting moving with some quick
wins, especially in this 18 to 24 month timeframe is
particularly important to establish momentum and get everyone
understanding where this can go and how powerful it can be.
Mr. Davis. Those are all the questions I have.
Mr. Turner.
Mr. Turner. One of the projects that was mentioned by Ms.
Canales, I believe, is the Project SAFE COM. That is an effort
to improve communications capability between Federal, State and
local agencies, law enforcement agencies, to enhance public
safety. It is a wireless system, as I understand?
Ms. Canales. Yes.
Mr. Turner. Is the Treasury the lead on that?
Ms. Canales. Yes, sir, we are the managing partner for the
Wireless Public Safety Initiative. We had our first pilot test
of the wireless initiative with the 2002 Olympics where for the
first time in Olympic history we had just two networks that all
the various local, State and Federal enforcement and public
safety communities use to share information. Normally there are
hundreds of wireless networks up there, none of which talk to
each other, none of which communicate, no interoperability, so
we had a very successful run at the Olympics. We hope to
proceed further.
We are working out the goals with Mr. Forman and his team
as we speak but the basic goal is to provide communication
between local, State and Federal entities so that they can
share case information.
Mr. Turner. What are the Federal agencies working with you
on that project?
Ms. Canales. There are several. Treasury has several
bureaus on the team, then we have the Department of Justice,
FEMA, the Homeland Security team is on there. Those are our
strongest partners right now.
Mr. Turner. How do you share the cost of that project?
Ms. Canales. That is the challenge. It is interesting that
the technology seems to be the easy part in a lot of these
instances. Several of the agencies have funding in their 2002-
2003 appropriations for wireless initiatives, however, we have
to find ways to create program management offices where we
share responsibility and funding. The sharing of resources has
been the critical issue for the wireless initiative.
Some agencies have more funding in their appropriations
than others. Should they bear the brunt of the cost because
they have the most funding, is that fair? Those are the types
of questions we have to answer. Some agencies have structures,
frequencies and staff that they have built for specific
services to the public and what happens when we pool our
resources and don't need as many people, products, services and
resources. Those are some of the issues that we are tackling
right now and we are in the midst of tackling those issues.
Mr. Turner. Would that be the kind of project that could be
funded through the E-Government Fund if there were actually
money there to do so?
Ms. Canales. Certainly. I think all of the 24 initiatives
would qualify. I think in light of September 11th we are
focusing on some more of the public safety type initiatives but
in a way the E-Government Fund also should take a look at the
underlying architecture and infrastructure and tools that we
all use and we all need in order to progress.
So there is value in funding the tools and standards we all
need to use across government because a lot of us don't have
them. We need those capabilities before we can expand to
actually provide the services and products. Certainly public
safety initiatives would be very high on the priority list.
Mr. Turner. If you are trying to get cooperation say with
the Department of Justice and you feel they are not willing to
carry their fair share of this project and pay for their share
of it but you know obviously they have to be a partner, who do
you go to for help to encourage another agency to step forward
and carry out their fair share, and who makes the final
decision regarding the sharing that should and will take place?
Ms. Canales. At the highest levels, we have cooperation.
The Secretary of the Department of Treasury and the Attorney
General for Justice fully support the sharing of resources.
When the rubber meets the road is where we get into the
trouble.
We start with the program managers and we try to work it
out at those levels. If that doesn't work, we have several
methods in place. One, through my role in the Federal CIO
Council, E-Government Coordination, we have a facilitation task
order in place that the program managers and agencies can use
for facilitation.
It is a task order that helps program managers deal with
the change management and the cultural issues. They do 2 and 3
day sessions and get the various agencies in a room, focus on
the goals and business requirements and try to get away from
the ownership issues and cultural issues and focus on the right
answer and how to get there.
That has helped many of the initiatives move from that
initial phase of this is what we want to do to this is how we
do it. That is where we are with the wireless program right
now. We have had two 1 day sessions of change management,
cultural change, getting the partners together.
A lot of the issues are simply learning to work together,
crossing our agency boundaries, developing trust, figuring out
how to share information securely, who owns what, who is
responsible for what, data quality, those types of issues. So
that mechanism seems to work well because it allows the team
members to work it out as a team rather than having OMB and the
Secretaries come in and you must, you must, you must. I think
it helps for the team members to work it out on their own.
Mr. Turner. Ms. Callahan, you mentioned the eligibility
assistance on-line or gov benefits I guess it is called. How
many agencies are involved in that?
Ms. Callahan. We have a total of 11 partners who work with
us. They range from the Veterans Administration to HUD,
Agriculture, and a variety of others including Energy, not to
leave anyone out.
Mr. Turner. How do you get all those agencies to cooperate
and work together?
Ms. Callahan. Extensive facilitation. What we have done is
establish through the business case our strategy and then
working with the individual agencies that are all partners to
identify their strengths. Some agencies have in-kind
contributions where they may not have appropriation funding
available but they have an expertise, a particular skill that
we need for accomplishment of the objective, in which case they
provide that resource to the project itself to achieve the
goal.
In other cases, it can be something as simple as in one
instance we had a partner provide office equipment and some
particular supplies that we didn't have. So we are leveraging
it across the board ranging from actual appropriations and
funding related resources to in-kind contributions through IT
work force related activities and general management principles
for program management efforts as a whole.
Mr. Turner. I understand that effort was originally at the
Department of Labor and now it is hosted on First Gov. Could
you tell us how that change took place, what were the reasons
for it and what benefits have been derived?
Ms. Callahan. One point of clarification. With eligibility
assistance on-line, the initial emphasis to do it at the e-
government level, architecturally speaking the early on
business case planned it initially right up front to be hosted
through First Gov. With that, we have been able to take
advantage of the recent redesign and some of the new
infrastructure investments that GSA has put in place for the
current First Gov environment and as such, leveraging those
resources and have been able to take advantage of their hosting
facilities and plan to continue to build on their lessons
learned and build on their investment through the Web content
management services they are currently working on.
Mr. Turner. You said there are 11 different agencies that
have participated with this on-line portal. Do you find it
difficult to get this done in a timely fashion when you have to
work out agreements with 11 different agencies? Is this the
type of project that if the funds were placed in the E-
Government Fund, this project could be carried out more
efficiently than is being done with the sharing of resources
that have to be agreed upon by the 11 agencies that
participate?
Ms. Callahan. Definitely the focus on being able to achieve
the objectives of the initiative would be more streamlined if
we could put our attention on accomplishing the goals of the
initiative versus the facilitation of resources to be able to
do the work.
A central funding resource I think would help all
initiatives, including eligibility assistance on-line in order
to allow us to focus on getting the job done and basically
break down the barriers we currently have in trying to identify
resources to perform the work.
Mr. Turner. Ms. Barnes, one of your initiatives you
mentioned in your testimony is e-training. As I understand, it
is designed to provide e-training services across government,
correct?
Ms. Barnes. I think it is designed to improve access to e-
training services across government. This is really not an
attempt to recreate the wheel and go out and identify new
training opportunities. What we are really trying to do is
establish a one-stop so there is a common place all Federal
Government workers can go to access some of the best training
programs already in existence. To the extent we need to, we can
create new ones but we believe there are a lot of good training
programs already available. We are trying to simplify access to
it, improve registration possibilities, and also establish the
Federal Government as a single point of negotiating training,
registration, licenses so that we are not paying for the same
courses many times over.
Mr. Turner. So your effort is really to collect in one
place the e-training programs of the various agencies?
Ms. Barnes. Yes, and make them available.
Mr. Turner. Do you have any initiative to actively promote
information technology training for Federal workers?
Ms. Barnes. Absolutely. If we do not promote and do
training, if you establish the best portal in the world and
there is no one using it, it is not worth anything, it is
meaningless.
Mr. Turner. How are you accomplishing that?
Ms. Barnes. It is part of our task plan. We are developing
our road maps and detailed task plans to deliver each one of
our initiatives. Part of every one of our initiatives is a
communication, education and training module. In fact the
approach we are using in all our initiatives is to come up with
discrete pieces that will be delivered in phases so we can
achieve earlier results for chunks of investment so we do not
have to buy into the whole thing at once. Each one of these
modules we are developing, we call usable modules. There is the
education, training, communication and sales part of that.
Mr. Turner. Do you envision your agency as being the
central place where training of Federal workers for information
technology will take place? Is that the way you view this
effort?
Ms. Barnes. I believe that training in the IT disciplines
will be part of this, yes.
Mr. Turner. Do you find that all other agencies of our
government are looking to you to carry out this responsibility
or do we have the various agencies of government with their own
independent programs in this area?
Ms. Barnes. Some have their programs and we have looked at
them and are anxious to take advantage of them and provide the
opportunities they have to other smaller agencies perhaps who
do not have well developed e-training programs. That is the
power of the initiative. Our partner group is very engaged in
this and very supportive. There is really no conflict in that
partner group about the idea of a one-stop training portal for
the Federal Government.
Mr. Turner. In your opinion, are we devoting sufficient
resources to training in the information technology field for
Federal workers?
Ms. Barnes. I can only speak for my agency and we have that
as a priority and we devote the resources we need to training
people both in the IT community as well as in our program
offices with the people we need to interact with to deliver
business capability. Sometimes there is an awareness issue,
especially in the IT security area. It is a well known fact
that the IT security programs in the agencies rest on the
program people to deliver it. The program people have to
certify and accredit their systems. They have to be the ones
that can say, yes, we have the right level of security for
these systems.
There is training throughout the organization in IT areas
that has to occur. We are sensitive to that and we are actually
trying to buildup that part of our program internally.
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Davis. Anyone want to add anything?
Mr. Holcomb. Just a comment on training. We use an on-line
training program for our IT security folks, 18,000 employees,
and we have about 25,000 contractors, about 43,000 people use
the on-line site today to do training. It is very efficient,
you know who is taking the training, you know they have been
certified. It is a very effective tool, particularly in IT
security. I think it will benefit the agencies to use on-line
training.
Mr. Davis. Before we close, let me thank everybody again
for attending this hearing. I want to thank our distinguished
panel of witnesses and Mr. Turner for participating. I would
also like to thank my staff for organizing it. I think we have
learned a great deal and I look forward to continuing our work
on these issues with my colleagues on this subcommittee.
I am going to enter into the record the briefing memo
distributed to subcommittee members. We will hold the record
open for 2 weeks from this date for anyone who might want to
forward submissions for possible inclusion.
This hearing is closed.
[Whereupon, at 4:12 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned,
to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]
[Additional information submitted for the hearing record
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