Electronic Government: Potential Exists for Enhancing
Collaboration on Four Initiatives (10-OCT-03, GAO-04-6).
In accordance with the President's management agenda, the Office
of Management and Budget has sponsored initiatives to promote
expansion of electronic government--the use of information
technology, particularly Web-based Internet applications, to
enhance government services. Each initiative demands a high
degree of collaboration among organizations. For four of these
initiatives, GAO was asked to determine, among other things,
their implementation progress and the extent of collaboration
among agencies and other parties involved.
-------------------------Indexing Terms-------------------------
REPORTNUM: GAO-04-6
ACCNO: A08704
TITLE: Electronic Government: Potential Exists for Enhancing
Collaboration on Four Initiatives
DATE: 10/10/2003
SUBJECT: Best practices
Electronic government
Federal procurement
Geographic information systems
Information resources management
Information technology
Interagency relations
Internet
Payroll systems
Small business assistance
Strategic information systems planning
Web sites
Performance measures
Stakeholder consultations
Dept. of the Interior Geospatial
One-Stop Initiative
GSA Integrated Acquisition Environment
Initiative
SBA Business Gateway Initiative
******************************************************************
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GAO-04-6
United States General Accounting Office
GAO
Report to Congressional Committees
October 2003
ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT
Potential Exists for Enhancing Collaboration on Four Initiatives
a
GAO-04-6
Highlights of GAO-04-6, a report to the Committee on Government Reform and
the Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental
Relations and the Census, House of Representatives
In accordance with the President's management agenda, the Office of
Management and Budget has sponsored initiatives to promote expansion of
electronic government-the use of information technology, particularly
Web-based Internet applications, to enhance government services. Each
initiative demands a high degree of collaboration among organizations. For
four of these initiatives, GAO was asked to determine, among other things,
their implementation progress and the extent of collaboration among
agencies and other parties involved.
To enhance the effectiveness of their efforts at collaboration and help
achieve the initiatives' goals, GAO is making recommendations to the
managing partners of the four initiatives that address the specific
collaboration issues revealed by the review.
In commenting on a draft of this report, all four agencies generally
agreed with our discussion of the collaboration challenges facing
e-government initiatives. In addition, each of the agencies provided
additional information about collaboration activities associated with
their initiatives as well as technical comments, which have been
incorporated into the final report where appropriate.
October 2003
ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT
Potential Exists for Enhancing Collaboration on Four Initiatives
All four of the e-government initiatives that GAO reviewed have made
progress in meeting the objectives and milestones of their early phases
(the four initiatives, their goals, and the agencies that act as their
managing partners are shown in the table). Two of the initiatives have
established Web portals-www.geodata.gov for the Geospatial One-Stop
initiative and www.BusinessLaw.gov for the Business Gateway. The projects
face additional challenging tasks, such as e-Payroll's objective of
establishing governmentwide payroll processing standards and Geospatial
One-Stop's goal of compiling a comprehensive inventory of geospatial data
holdings.
All four initiatives have taken steps to promote collaboration with their
partner agencies, but none has been fully effective in involving all
important stakeholders. For example, for the e-Payroll initiative, the
Office of Personnel Management has taken steps to promote close
collaboration with its four designated e-Payroll providers, but has not
addressed the concerns of a key stakeholder that will be required to make
changes to its payroll processes and policies. For Geospatial One-Stop,
Interior has established a board of directors with broad representation,
but has not taken steps to ensure that key stakeholders at the state and
local levels are involved in the initiative. For the Integrated
Acquisition Environment initiative, the General Services Administration is
using a variety of tools to promote collaboration, but has not involved
partner agencies' chief financial officers. Finally, for the Business
Gateway, the Small Business Administration has not taken key steps to
facilitate effective collaboration with its partners and stakeholders,
such as establishing a collaborative decision-making process and reaching
formal agreements on partner roles and responsibilities. All four
initiatives have faced short time frames to accomplish their major tasks,
so that competing priorities have sometimes hindered full collaboration.
However, without effective collaboration on the tasks that remain to be
completed, these initiatives may be at risk of not fully achieving their
objectives or the broader goals of the President's management agenda.
Four e-Government Initiatives Reviewed
Initiative Goal Managing partner
e-Payroll Standardize payroll operations across all federal Office of
Personnel agencies Management Geospatial One-Stop Coordinate the
collection and maintenance of Department of the
geospatial dataa Interior Integrated Acquisition Improve federal agencies'
acquisition of goods General Services Environment and services
Administration
Business Gateway Reduce the paperwork burden on small businesses and help
them find, understand, and comply with federal, state, and local laws and
regulations Small Business Administration
www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-6.
To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click on
the link above. For more information, contact Linda Koontz at (202)
512-6240 or [email protected].
Source: GAO.
a Geospatial data are all data associated with geographic locations.
Contents
Letter
Results in Brief
Background
E-Government Initiatives Have Made Progress in Their Initial
Stages Key Practices Facilitate Interagency Collaboration Initiatives Have
Achieved Varying Degrees of Collaboration Conclusions Recommendations for
Executive Action Agency Comments and Our Evaluation
1 2 4
7 18 21 40 41 41
Appendixes
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology 45
Appendix II: Source Materials for Key Collaboration Practices 47 GAO
Reports 47 Federal Agency Studies 47 International, State, and Local
Agency Studies 49 Private Sector Studies 50
Tables Table 1: Key Collaboration Practices and Their Major Elements 21
Table 2: e-Payroll Implementation of Key Collaboration
Practices 22
Table 3: Geospatial One-Stop Implementation of Key Collaboration
Practices 27
Table 4: Integrated Acquisition Environment Implementation of
Key Collaboration Practices 32
Table 5: Business Gateway Implementation of Key Collaboration
Practices 36
Figures Figure 1:
Figure 2: Figure 3:
Figure 4:
Figure 5:
OMB Management Structure for e-Government
Initiatives 6
Partners and Affected Parties for the e-Payroll Initiative 8
Partners and Affected Parties for the Geospatial One-Stop
Initiative 10
Partners and Affected Parties for the Integrated
Acquisition Environment Initiative 13
Partners and Affected Parties for the Business Gateway
Initiative 16
Contents
Abbreviations
CFO Chief Financial Officer
CIO Chief Information Officer
DFAS Defense Finance and Accounting Service
EPA Environmental Protection Agency
FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency
GIS geographic information systems
GPEA Government Paperwork Elimination Act
GSA General Services Administration
IRS Internal Revenue Service
IT information technology
OMB Office of Management and Budget
OPM Office of Personnel Management
SBA Small Business Administration
VA Department of Veterans Affairs
This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright
protection in the United States. It may be reproduced and distributed in
its entirety without further permission from GAO. However, because this
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copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to reproduce this material
separately.
A
United States General Accounting Office Washington, D.C. 20548
October 10, 2003
The Honorable Tom Davis
Chairman, Committee on Government Reform
House of Representatives
The Honorable Adam H. Putnam
Chairman, Subcommittee on Technology,
Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census Committee
on Government Reform House of Representatives
The term "electronic government" (or e-government) refers to the use of
information technology (IT), particularly Web-based Internet applications,
to enhance the access to and delivery of government information and
service to citizens, to business partners, to employees, and among
agencies at all levels of government. The President has identified the
expansion of e-government as one of the five priorities of his management
agenda; accordingly, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has
sponsored 25 initiatives to implement this agenda. This report
specifically reviews the challenge of achieving effective
interorganizational collaboration within 4 of these 25 OMB-sponsored
initiatives:
o e-Payroll, an initiative to standardize payroll operations across all
federal agencies;
o Geospatial One-Stop, an initiative to help coordinate the collection
and maintenance of geospatial data across all levels of government;1
o Integrated Acquisition Environment, an initiative to create electronic
tools to improve federal agencies' acquisition of goods and services; and
o Business Gateway, an initiative to reduce the paperwork burden on small
businesses and help them find, understand, and comply with federal, state,
and local laws and regulations.
Each of these initiatives demands a high degree of interorganizational
collaboration. Both e-Payroll and Integrated Acquisition Environment need
to work with a broad array of federal agencies. Geospatial One-Stop
1Geospatial data are any data associated with a geographic location.
depends on broad state and local government participation, and the
Business Gateway aims to serve the small business community.
As agreed with your office, our objectives were to review four
OMB-sponsored e-government initiatives and determine (1) the progress that
has been made to date in implementing the selected initiatives, (2) the
major factors that can affect successful collaboration on e-government
initiatives, and (3) the extent to which federal agencies and other
entities have been collaborating on the selected initiatives. To assess
the progress of the initiatives and the extent to which agencies were
collaborating on them, we reviewed capital asset plans, communications
strategies, and other project documentation; conducted interviews with
project officials; and assessed electronic services made available to
customers to date. We identified key practices affecting collaboration on
e-government initiatives through a review of government, academic, and
private sector literature on interorganizational collaboration. Details on
our objectives, scope, and methodology are provided in appendix I. Our
work was conducted from December 2002 to September 2003 in accordance with
generally accepted government auditing standards.
Results in Brief The four e-government initiatives we reviewed have made
progress in meeting the objectives and milestones of their early phases.
For example, Web portals were established for two of the
initiatives-www.geodata.gov for the Geospatial One-Stop initiative and
www.BusinessLaw.gov for the Business Gateway. In addition, the Integrated
Acquisition Environment initiative established an online capability that
federal customers can use to access a variety of available interagency
contracts. To continue building on these early achievements, the projects
need to successfully address additional challenging tasks, such as those
associated with e-Payroll's objective of establishing governmentwide
payroll processing standards or Geospatial One-Stop's goal of compiling a
comprehensive inventory of geospatial data holdings. In July 2003, OMB
refocused one initiative, the Business Gateway, which had been making slow
progress on its previous objectives. OMB tied the project's objectives and
milestones more closely to the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act's2 goal
of reducing the burden of federal paperwork on small businesses.
2Small Business Paperwork Relief Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-198).
Based on a review of government, private sector, and academic research, we
identified five key broad practices that were found to have a significant
impact on collaboration across disparate organizations:
o Establishing a collaborative management structure that provides for
shared leadership and involvement at all levels and defines roles and
responsibilities so that each participating organization is accountable
for the initiative's success.
o Maintaining collaborative relationships among participants within a
climate of trust and respect, including mechanisms for feedback and
debate, based on formal agreements that document a shared vision for the
project.
o Contributing resources equitably among all participants to reinforce
the shared commitment to achieving common objectives.
o Facilitating communication and outreach that provide complete and
timely information for all stakeholders to promote trust and reinforce
commitment to achieving common objectives.
o Adopting a common set of standards for use by all project partners to
provide a basis upon which otherwise independent entities can agree to
share or integrate data or services.
While the four initiatives we reviewed have all taken steps to promote
collaboration with their partner agencies, none of the initiatives has
been fully effective in adopting these practices to fully involve
important stakeholders. For example, for the e-Payroll initiative, the
Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has taken steps to promote close
collaboration with its four designated e-Payroll providers, but it has not
addressed the concerns of one of the key stakeholders that will be
required to make changes to its payroll processes and policies. For
Geospatial One-Stop, although Interior has established a board of
directors with broad representation, it has not taken steps to ensure that
a large number of the potential stakeholders at the state and local levels
are involved in the initiative. For the Integrated Acquisition Environment
initiative, the General Services Administration (GSA) is using a variety
of tools to promote collaboration, but it has not involved partner
agencies' chief financial officers. Finally, for the Business Gateway, the
Small Business Administration (SBA) has not taken key steps to facilitate
effective collaboration with its partners and stakeholders, such as
establishing a
collaborative decision-making process and reaching formal agreements on
partner roles and responsibilities. All four initiatives have faced short
time frames to accomplish their major tasks, and they generally have not
fully adopted these collaboration practices because of other competing
priorities. However, without effective collaboration on the tasks that
remain to be completed, these initiatives may be at risk of not fully
achieving their objectives or the broader goals of the President's
management agenda.
We are making recommendations to the managing partner agencies for each of
the four e-government initiatives to enhance the effectiveness of
collaboration as a tool to use in achieving their objectives.
We received written comments on a draft of this report from the Director
of OPM; Interior's Assistant Secretary, Policy, Management and Budget; and
SBA's Program Executive Officer for e-Government. We also recieved oral
comments from the Administrator of GSA. All four agencies generally agreed
with our discussion of the collaboration challenges facing e-government
initiatives. In addition, each of the agencies provided additional or
updated information about collaboration activities associated with their
initiatives, as well as technical comments, which have been incorporated
into the final report where appropriate.
Background In the context of electronic government, collaboration can be
defined as a mutually beneficial and well-defined relationship entered
into by two or more organizations to achieve common goals. It is an
in-depth, managed relationship that brings together separate and distinct
organizations into a new structure. Recent management reform efforts
within the federal government have focused on collaboration as a way to
reduce duplication and integrate federal provision of services to the
public. Collaboration is a key theme of the President's management agenda,
published in 2002, which aims at making the federal government more
focused on citizens and results.
One of the key provisions of the management agenda is the expansion of
electronic government. To implement this provision, OMB identified and is
working on projects that address the issue of multiple federal agencies
performing similar tasks that could be consolidated through e-government
processes and technology. Specifically, OMB established a team, known as
the E-Government Task Force, that analyzed the federal bureaucracy and
identified areas of significant overlap and redundancy in how federal
agencies provide services to the public. The task force found that
multiple agencies were conducting redundant operations within 30 major
functions and business lines in the executive branch. Further, each line
of business was being performed by an average of 19 agencies, and each
agency was involved in an average of 17 business lines. To address these
redundancies, the task force evaluated potential projects, focusing on
collaborative opportunities to integrate IT operations and simplify
processes within lines of business across agencies and around citizen
needs. As a result of this assessment, the task force identified a set of
25 high-profile initiatives3 to lead the federal government's drive toward
e-government transformation and enhanced service delivery through
collaboration.
As the lead agency overseeing the management of these initiatives, OMB
developed a strategy for expanding electronic government, which it
published in February 2002.4 In its strategy, OMB established a portfolio
management structure to help oversee and guide the selected initiatives
and facilitate a collaborative working environment for each of them. This
structure includes five portfolios, each with a designated portfolio
manager reporting directly to OMB's Associate Director for IT and
E-Government. The five portfolios are "government to citizen," "government
to business," "government to government," "internal efficiency and
effectiveness," and "cross-cutting." Each of the 25 initiatives is
assigned to one of these portfolios, according to the type of results the
initiative is intended to provide. Further, for each initiative, OMB
designated a specific agency to be the initiative's "managing partner,"
responsible for leading the initiative, and assigned other federal
agencies as "partners" in carrying out the initiative. Figure 1 provides
an overview of the e-government management structure established by OMB.
3The E-Government Task Force originally selected 23 initiatives in
September 2001. A 24th, e-Payroll, was then added by the President's
Management Council. In 2002, a decision was made to separate one
initiative into two individual projects, resulting in the current count of
25 projects.
4Office of Management and Budget, E-Government Strategy (Washington, D.C.:
Feb. 27, 2002).
Figure 1: OMB Management Structure for e-Government Initiatives
Note: Initiatives marked by arrows are those reviewed in this report.
Successful implementation of the 25 cross-agency e-government
initiatives-resulting in reductions in redundancies and overlap of federal
programs and services-requires effective collaboration. Recognizing that
collaboration is challenging, the President's budget for fiscal year 2004
highlighted the continuing need to establish a collaborative framework for
cross-agency e-government initiatives. In November 2002, we reported that
despite the importance placed on collaboration in OMB's e-government
strategy, less than half of the initial business cases for the
OMB-sponsored initiatives addressed a strategy for successfully
collaborating with other government and nongovernment entities.5 Based on
these results, we recommended that the OMB Director ensure that managing
partners of the 25 initiatives work with partner agencies to develop and
document their collaborative strategies.
E-Government Initiatives Have Made Progress in Their Initial Stages
All four of the e-government initiatives that we reviewed have met
milestones for the early phases of their planned activities. For example,
Web portals were established for two of the initiatives-www.geodata.gov
for the Geospatial One-Stop initiative and www.BusinessLaw.gov for the
Business Gateway. In addition, the Integrated Acquisition Environment
initiative established an online capability that federal customers can use
to access a variety of available interagency contracts. However, while the
projects are continuing to make progress, some of the tasks they face are
increasingly challenging, such as e-Payroll's objective of establishing
governmentwide payroll processing standards or Geospatial One-Stop's goal
of compiling a comprehensive inventory of geospatial data holdings. In
July 2003, OMB refocused one initiative, the Business Gateway, which had
been making slow progress on its previous objectives. OMB tied the
project's objectives and milestones more closely to the Small Business
Paperwork Relief Act's goal of reducing the burden of federal paperwork on
small businesses.
e-Payroll The goal of the e-Payroll initiative is to substantially
improve federal payroll operations by standardizing them across all
agencies, integrating them with other human resource functions, and making
them easy to use and cost-effective. To achieve this goal, plans are to
consolidate the operations of 22 existing federal payroll system
providers; simplify and standardize federal payroll policies and
procedures; and better integrate payroll, human resources, and finance
functions across federal agencies. OPM, the managing partner for
e-Payroll, chose four agencies to be
5U.S. General Accounting Office, Electronic Government: Selection and
Implementation of the Office of Management and Budget's 24 Initiatives,
GAO-03-229 (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 22, 2002).
providers of payroll services to all 116 executive branch agencies. The
four selected providers are GSA and the Departments of Defense, Interior,
and Agriculture. The initiative is divided into two major phases: (1)
migrating each of the 18 nonselected payroll system providers to one of
the four selected providers by September 2004 and (2) defining an
enterprise architecture consistent with the Federal Enterprise
Architecture model and identifying technology solutions to replace legacy
systems. Figure 2 shows the partners and affected parties for the
e-Payroll initiative.
Figure 2: Partners and Affected Parties for the e-Payroll Initiative
Source: GAO.
Of the 22 executive branch agencies that currently operate payroll
systems, 6 also provide payroll services to other agencies. The four
providers selected by OPM-GSA, Defense's Defense Finance and Accounting
Service, Interior's National Business Center, and Agriculture's National
Finance Center-handle more than 70 percent of all federal civilian payroll
processing and accommodating more than 190 different pay plans. According
to OPM, many of the 22 current providers use custom-built systems that
have been in operation for many years and need to be replaced. Two of the
largest providers needing system replacement estimated the costs of
implementing new systems at $46 to $600 million per system. Conversely,
OPM estimates that consolidating current federal payroll systems would
yield savings of approximately $1.1 billion over the
next 10 years. These savings would result from reducing operating costs,
eliminating duplicative systems investments, and simplifying payroll
processing.
According to OPM project management documents, major phase one objectives
of the initiative include (1) defining governance for the initiative, (2)
standardizing payroll policies, (3) establishing an e-Payroll enterprise
architecture, and (4) overseeing consolidation of agency payroll
operations. The first major project deliverable-establishing governance-
was completed in June 2002, as scheduled. The providers have been selected
and a migration schedule established for nonselected agencies. However,
the other actions have been delayed. Standardization of policies,
originally scheduled for completion in June 2002, is currently ongoing.
The enterprise architecture planning task and the initial phase of agency
consolidations were both scheduled to begin in October 2002 but were not
initiated until January 2003. According to the project manager, these
schedule deviations have not led to a significant delay in the overall
progress of the initiative toward the goal of consolidating the 22 payroll
providers to 4 by September 2004. However, migrating the operations of the
18 nonselected providers to the selected providers, which began in
February 2003, could pose new challenges, because previously unidentified
discrepancies among agency policies may come to light.
Geospatial One-Stop Geospatial One-Stop is intended to promote
coordination of geospatial data collection and maintenance across all
levels of government. Geospatial data-data associated with a geographic
location-can be analyzed and displayed through geographic information
systems (GIS) to aid decision makers at all levels of government. For
example, the Department of Health and Human Services uses GIS technology
to analyze data on population and topography (including roads, streams,
and land elevation) in order to track the spread of environmental
contamination through a community. Using the power of GIS to coordinate
and integrate disparate kinds of geospatial data can lead to
better-informed decisions about public investments in infrastructure and
services-including national security, law enforcement, health care, and
the environment-as well as a more effective and timely response in
emergency situations. The specific objectives of the Geospatial One-Stop
initiative include (1) deploying an Internet portal for one-stop access to
geospatial data; (2) developing a set of data standards for seven types of
geospatial data; (3) creating an inventory of federal data holdings; and
(4) encouraging greater coordination among federal, state,
and local agencies about existing and planned geospatial data collection
projects.
The Department of the Interior is the managing partner agency for the
initiative. Other federal partners include the Departments of Agriculture,
Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, and Transportation; the
Environmental Protection Agency; and the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration. Stakeholders include nonpartner federal agencies, the
International City/County Management Association, the Intertribal GIS
Council, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, the
National States Geographic Information Council, the National Association
of Counties, the National League of Cities, and the Western Governors
Association. Figure 3 shows the partners and affected parties for the
initiative.
Figure 3: Partners and Affected Parties for the Geospatial One-Stop
Initiative
Source: GAO.
The Geospatial One-Stop initiative has made progress toward achieving its
four objectives. In June 2003, the first publicly available version of the
Internet portal was made available online at www.geodata.gov. The portal
is intended to serve as a single access point for users seeking links to
geospatial data that were previously online but not as easily accessible.
The portal was originally scheduled to go online in 2004, based on work
being
performed by the Open GIS Consortium.6 However, OMB accelerated this
schedule by requiring that the portal be operational by May 2003. In order
to have a portal operational within this time frame, the board agreed to
turn near-term work over to ESRI, Inc., which developed the portal based
on modifications to an existing portal it had built for Interior's Bureau
of Land Management.7 Project officials now plan to make use of the Open
GIS Consortium's development work to enhance www.geodata.gov in 2004.
Regarding the second objective-data standards development-project
officials developed draft versions of each of the planned standards on
schedule in 2003. In most cases the drafts are simplified version of older
standards developed by and for federal agency use. The draft standards
were provided for informal public review and comment on the Geospatial
One-Stop Web site. By the end of September 2003, project officials had
submitted these drafts to the American National Standards Institute, where
formal public review will be conducted and the standards will be
finalized. Project officials expect the standards to be approved in 2004.
Progress in developing an inventory of federal geospatial data holdings-
Geospatial One-Stop's third objective-has been limited. OMB Circular A-11
required that by the end of February 2003, agencies make accessible and
searchable for posting on the Internet metadata8 about all data sets with
a replacement cost exceeding $1 million. Potential users of geospatial
data sets need metadata to determine whether the data are useful for their
purposes and to be aware of any special stipulations about processing and
interpreting the data. An initial inventory of 256,000 existing federal
data sets was assembled and made available through the Geospatial One-Stop
portal when it was implemented in June 2003, and the Geospatial One-Stop
Web site provides an online tool to assist agencies in documenting their
geospatial metadata. However, the extent to which agencies have met
requirements for submitting metadata is unknown. According to the
6The Open GIS Consortium, Inc., is an international industry group of 258
companies, government agencies, and universities that develop open systems
specifications for processing geospatial information.
7The Bureau of Land Management's portal, www.geocommunicator.gov, was
developed using commercial off-the-shelf software provided by the
Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI).
8Metadata are information describing the content, quality, condition, and
other characteristics of data, such as when they were collected or the
coordinate system they are based on.
project's metadata coordinator, agencies may not be aware of their
responsibilities for posting metadata about their geospatial submissions.
To address this issue, the project team is planning to take steps to
improve communication with federal agencies to help ensure that they
understand their responsibilities for making geospatial data publicly
accessible.
To encourage greater coordination among federal, state, and local agencies
about existing and planned geospatial data collection projects (the
initiative's fourth objective), an intergovernmental board of directors
was established. The purpose of the board is to help ensure collaboration
among potential stakeholders from all government sectors. In addition, a
Geospatial One-Stop Web site (www.geo-one-stop.gov) was created to provide
information about the project, its progress, and its benefits; the
project's management staff and executive director provide briefings across
the country to facilitate coordination with states and localities; and an
outreach coordinator was appointed to further communication and
coordination among partners and stakeholders.
Integrated Acquisition Environment
The overall goal of the Integrated Acquisition Environment initiative is
to create a secure suite of electronic tools to facilitate cost-effective
acquisition of goods and services by federal agencies, while eliminating
inefficiencies in the current acquisition process. To meet this goal,
plans are to (1) consolidate common acquisition functions through a shared
services environment; (2) leverage existing acquisition capabilities
within agencies to create a simpler, common, integrated business process
for buyers and sellers that promotes competition, transparency, and
integrity; and (3) develop cross-agency standards to eliminate duplication
of effort and redundancy of data. GSA is the managing partner agency. In
addition, 31 other federal agencies are considered participating partners
in the initiative. Figure 4 shows the partners and affected parties for
this initiative.
Figure 4: Partners and Affected Parties for the Integrated Acquisition
Environment Initiative
Source: GAO.
Regarding its first objective of consolidating common acquisition
functions through a shared services environment, the project was generally
on schedule at the time of our review, although several interim milestones
were completed later than scheduled. An example of one of the tasks within
this objective is the development of "eMarketplace," an online capability
intended to provide federal customers a single access point to interagency
contracts and electronic catalogs for goods and services. In July 2002 an
initial operational directory structure for interagency contracts was
completed, and in May 2003 the directory was made available online for
agencies to populate with their contract data. The development of the
directory structure had been scheduled for December 2002, but it was
delayed because the approval process required to make changes to federal
acquisition regulations was lengthier than had been anticipated.
Overall there have been no significant deviations from the planned
schedule for tasks within the second objective, leveraging existing agency
acquisition capabilities to create a common, integrated business process
for buyers and sellers. For example, the Integrated Acquisition
Environment's Business Partner Network, based on the Department of
Defense's Central Contractor Registration system, is intended to provide a
single point of registration, validation, and access for grantees, federal
entities, and companies seeking to do business with the federal
government. Since March 2002, the project team has been working to develop
this network to serve as a single source for vendor data for the
government, to integrate data with other vendor-based systems in the
government, and to establish a process for verifying vendor information
with third parties, such as vendors' Taxpayer Identification Numbers with
the Internal Revenue Service. In February 2003, as scheduled, the Business
Partner Network completed the development of an online system that allows
contractors to enter their representations and certification information
once for use on all government contracts. Previously, vendors were
required to submit representations and certification individually for each
large purchase contract award.
Initial work addressing the project's third objective-developing
cross-agency standards to eliminate duplication of effort and redundancy
of data-was also on schedule at the time of our review. The standards to
be developed under this objective include data elements, business
definitions, interfaces, and agency roles and responsibilities regarding
government acquisition data. These standards are expected to serve as a
foundation for redesigning the current inefficient process of
government-to-government transactions by streamlining ordering, billing,
and collection and improving reconciliation of intragovernmental
transactions. Since March 2002, the project team has been working on the
first task of the standards development process-developing a map of
current acquisition practices and defining future acquisition processes.
According to project managers, the project team completed this task by the
end of September 2003.
The implementation phase for the Integrated Acquisition Environment
project is scheduled for completion by December 2004. While GSA had
successfully completed several scheduled milestones at the time of our
review, other major tasks lie ahead. These tasks include (1) ensuring that
the online directory of contracts is populated and kept up to date, which
will require all federal agencies to submit their data into the directory
in a standardized format; (2) deploying commercial standards to facilitate
interaction among shared acquisition systems, between shared systems and
agency systems, and between shared systems and vendor systems; and (3)
redesigning and deploying government-to-government transactions, which
calls for standard procedures and common data elements to integrate
disparate systems and processes across the federal government.
Business Gateway The Business Gateway9 is a cross-agency,
intergovernmental effort to create a Web services portal that reduces the
burden on small businesses by making it easier for them to find,
understand, and comply with governmental laws and regulations. It is
intended to provide small businesses with one-stop access to information
about federal, state, and local laws and regulations and how to comply
with them. More specifically, the Business Gateway is intended to help
businesses find information on laws and regulatory requirements, provide
assistance through automated tools designed to help businesses understand
their regulatory obligations, and transact business by supporting online
permit applications and licensing tools. The initiative is focused on four
functional areas- environmental protection, workplace health and safety,
employment, and taxes-as well as several specific industries, including
trucking and mining. SBA is the managing partner agency. Other federal
partners include the Environmental Protection Agency; the Department of
Labor and its component agency, the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration; GSA; the Internal Revenue Service; and the Departments of
Transportation, Energy, Interior, and Homeland Security. Nonfederal
partners include trade associations and state chief information officers
from Washington, Illinois, Georgia, Missouri, Iowa, and New Jersey. Figure
5 shows the partners and affected parties for this initiative.
9Until July 1, 2003, the Business Gateway project was known as Business
Compliance One-Stop.
Figure 5: Partners and Affected Parties for the Business Gateway Initiative
Source: GAO.
The initiative was originally planned to be implemented in two separate
phases. Phase one was to consist of implementing www.BusinessLaw.gov, a
Web portal intended to serve as a single place for finding "plain English"
legal guides and legal and regulatory information links from all 50 states
and compliance assistance in 17 areas, such as workplace safety or
environmental protection. This phase was completed when the portal became
operational in December 2001. The second phase was to make the portal more
interactive and broader in focus. More specifically, phase two objectives
included (1) developing a navigation tool known as a "portal maximizer,"
intended to enhance access to laws and regulations by helping users to
quickly find relevant information from large amounts of data; (2) offering
a range of automated compliance assistance tools for specific kinds of
regulations, as well as a "profiler"10 to identify applicable tools; and
(3) prototyping a transaction engine for integrated business registration,
online licensing, and permitting.
Before the project was refocused in July 2003, SBA had made only limited
progress toward achieving phase two objectives and was not on track to
10The profiler is intended to gather information about a user's business
and use the information to identify relevant compliance assistance tools
and resources. The system uses a set of online, standardized questions to
prompt users to provide information such as type of business, number of
employees, location, and whether it is a new or existing business.
meet its planned 2003 milestones. A pilot version of the planned portal
maximizer had been implemented, but only four of the planned automated
compliance assistance tools had been developed.11 Project plans called for
up to 30 additional compliance assistance expert tools to be developed
during the second phase of the project. The profiler was also behind
schedule, with only mockups of the planned user interface developed. Work
on three specialized portals for the trucking, food, and chemical
industries was also behind schedule. The project manager attributed the
incomplete progress to a funding shortfall within SBA for fiscal year
2003.
On July 1, 2003, OMB announced that it was refocusing the project to
reduce the paperwork burden on small businesses. The decision was based on
the findings of an interagency task force created by OMB in response to
requirements of the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act of 2002. In its
final report,12 the task force stated that it believed the initiative
showed promise as a means for achieving the purpose of the Small Business
Paperwork Relief Act, since it was intended to ultimately provide small
businesses a single point of entry for regulatory compliance information.
The refocused project is now aimed at creating a gateway for compliance
assistance and online transactions that would reduce the paperwork burden
through integrated electronic forms. One of the stated goals of the
planned gateway is to increase federal agencies' compliance with the
Government Paperwork Elimination Act13 to at least 75 percent by September
2004. This was to be achieved by creating, with the help of GSA, a central
online repository for federal forms and by consolidating information
collections and forms with similar data elements. Another goal is to
reduce redundant data and the overall number of federal forms by at least
10 percent.
According to several participating agency representatives, it is unclear
how the change in the project's focus will affect implementation of the
previously planned modules, such as the profiler and the compliance tools.
At the time of our review, no decision had been made about what funding
11The four tools that were implemented include (1) the Alien Employee Visa
Classification eTool, (2) the Emergency Evacuation Procedures eTool, (3)
the Auto Dismantler & Recycler Environmental Audit Advisor, and (4) the
Motor Vehicle Waste Disposal Wells Advisor.
12Office of Management and Budget, Final Report of the Small Business
Paperwork Relief Task Force (Washington, D.C.: June 27, 2003).
13Public Law 105-277, Div. C, tit. XVII.
or other resources would be made available to continue development efforts
that had been previously under way as part of phase two of the project.
Key Practices Facilitate Interagency Collaboration
With the increasing focus on collaboration brought about by the move
toward e-government, there has been a need to identify key characteristics
that contribute to the success of cross-organizational collaborative
e-government projects. Based on a review of government, private sector,
and academic research and guidance,14 we identified five broad key
practices that can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of
collaboration across disparate organizations. These key collaboration
practices could have a significant impact on whether the 25 OMB-sponsored
e-government initiatives are successful. Taken as a whole, these factors
can provide an interorganizational project team with the fundamentals for
an effective collaborative process.
o Establishing a collaborative management structure. Building a
collaborative management structure across participating organizations is
an essential foundation for ensuring effective collaboration. According to
the literature we reviewed, strong leadership is critical to the success
of intergovernmental initiatives. Involvement by leaders from all levels
is important for maintaining commitment and keeping a project on track.
Defining a comprehensive structure of participants' roles and
responsibilities is also a key factor. For example, according to a 1998
study by the Intergovernmental Advisory Board,15 a project to develop a
nationwide law enforcement information system was successful due to the
establishment of a policy board responsible for coordination and
partnership within the law enforcement community. The board's members
represented law enforcement organizations at all levels of government, and
the board provided a structure and process to ensure a voice for each
member of the partnership.
14Appendix II provides a complete list of the collaboration sources that
we reviewed for our study.
15Intergovernmental Advisory Board (General Services Administration),
Foundations for Successful Intergovernmental Management: Federal, State
and Local Government Experiences (October 1998), 54-55.
o Maintaining collaborative relationships. Once a collaborative
management structure is in place, well-defined, equitable working
relationships must be developed and take root in order to ensure effective
ongoing collaboration. Researchers have found that all the partners in a
collaborative undertaking need to share a common vision and work in a
climate of trust and respect in order to elicit full participation. An
important element of establishing effective collaborative relationships is
to reach formal agreements with each partner organization on a clear
purpose, expected outputs, and realistic performance measures. For
example, in an intergovernmental project led by the state of Pennsylvania
to enhance its vehicle emissions program, a broad coalition of stakeholder
groups representing government, private businesses, and special interest
groups were directly involved in selecting a strategy and designing the
program. According to a GSA study of the project,16 the participants
worked well together and endorsed the process primarily because all views
were considered seriously and many suggestions were incorporated.
o Contributing resources equitably. The responsibility for meeting a
project's resource requirements needs to be equitably distributed among
project participants. In order to facilitate a collaborative environment,
each participating organization should contribute resources in the form of
human capital or funding to demonstrate its commitment to the success of
the project. In addition, formal processes to collect these resources from
partner agencies-such as written agreements to document the resource
contributions expected from each partner-are useful to support this
practice. According to a study performed by the Amherst H. Wilder
Foundation,17 a collaborative group needs to consider the resources of its
members. Similarly, partner organizations must be prepared to devote
substantial staff hours to the collaborative effort.
o Facilitating communication and outreach. Another key element of
effective collaboration is developing and implementing effective
communication and outreach mechanisms. Tools that clearly communicate the
project status and needs among all partners should be
16Foundations for Successful Intergovernmental Management: Federal, State
and Local Government Experiences, 21-22.
17Collaboration: What Makes It Work, Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, second
edition (2001),
27.
used continuously, targeting all partner organizations and their key
decision makers. In addition, effective outreach mechanisms are important
to keep other stakeholders informed who may not be actively involved in
developing systems or business processes, and an outreach plan may be
needed to specify tasks and mechanisms to help promote interest and
participation in the project. For example, while working on a
collaborative project to reduce highway fatalities, the Department of
Transportation implemented a knowledge-sharing management portal to
facilitate the exchange of information and ideas between the Federal
Highway Administration and the states. This communication tool proved to
be effective in ensuring widespread and frequent communication and was
subsequently implemented in other transportation communities.18
o Adopting a common set of standards. Developing a common set of
standards that are agreed to and used by all project partners is a key
factor for effective collaboration. Such standards provide a basis for
more seamless systems, data, and business process integration on
collaborative projects, and help to ensure that those systems and
processes can work together. Specifically, ensuring that there are
processes in place by which project partners can select and agree upon
standards and that all partners are adopting them are key factors in
establishing these essential common standards. In GSA's Government Without
Boundaries program, which provided a virtual pool of government
information and services, all stakeholders agreed to a technical approach
for interoperability and implemented a demonstration to prove the
concept.19
These five key practices and their major elements are summarized in table
1.
18Industry Advisory Council, e-Government Shared Interest Group,
Cross-Jurisdictional e-Government Implementations (September 2002), 16-17.
19Office of Intergovernmental Solutions, General Services Administration,
Government Without Boundaries: A Management Approach to Intergovernmental
Programs (May 23, 2002).
Table 1: Key Collaboration Practices and Their Major Elements Key practice Major
elements
Establish a collaborative Strong leadership is present among partners.
management structure Involvement of all leadership levels is an instituted
practice.
Partner/stakeholder roles and responsibilities are clearly defined, agreed
to, and understood by participants.
Maintain collaborative A common vision is shared among partners.
relationships A climate of trust and respect is fostered through open
communication.
Formal agreements with a clear purpose, common performance outputs, and
realistic performance measures are used to provide a firm management
foundation.
Contribute resources Formal processes to contribute human capital and
funds,
equitably such as written agreements, ensure that needed resources are
promised and delivered.
Facilitate communication Communication strategies facilitate two-way
communication and outreach among the project team, partners, and other
stakeholders.
Outreach programs keep those affected by the initiative informed of new
developments and provide structured means for feedback and questions.
Adopt a common set of Processes are in place by which partners can
discuss,
standards develop, and agree to common standards needed for initiative
success.
Source: GAO.
Initiatives Have Achieved Varying Degrees of Collaboration
The four initiatives we reviewed have all taken steps to promote
collaboration with their partner agencies. However, none of the
initiatives has been fully effective in collaborating with important
stakeholders. In comparing the four initiatives' ongoing and planned
activities with the key collaboration practices, we identified significant
accomplishments as well as shortcomings and potential challenges. For
example, regarding two key practices (establishing a collaborative
management structure and contributing resources equitably) we found that
three of the four initiatives-e-Payroll, Geospatial One-Stop, and
Integrated Acquisition Environment-had taken actions that met planned
objectives or that stakeholders found to be effective. However, regarding
another key practice-facilitating communication and outreach-an equal
number (Geospatial One-Stop, Integrated Acquisition Environment, and
Business Gateway) had not taken all the steps they could. The four
initiatives have all faced short time frames to accomplish their tasks,
and they generally
have not fully adopted key collaboration practices because of other
competing priorities. However, without involving important stakeholders,
the initiatives increase the risk that they will not fully achieve their
objectives or the broader goals of the President's management agenda.
e-Payroll OPM has taken positive steps to facilitate collaboration among
the e-Payroll initiative's partners, such as (1) establishing a management
structure with well-defined partner agency roles and responsibilities and
(2) including the four provider agencies in its effort to identify a
common set of payroll standards for the federal government. However, OPM
has not fully addressed concerns raised as part of the collaborative
process, including concerns about potential changes to payroll standards
that may be required for the final migration to the two provider
partnerships. Interagency collaboration on developing a common set of
payroll standards is particularly important because federal agencies
operate under a variety of legislative mandates that have complex
requirements for payroll processing, all of which must be fully addressed
in the new standards. In table 2, we provide an overview of the
initiative's implementation of the key collaboration practices that we
identified earlier, followed by a discussion of each of the practices.
Table 2: e-Payroll Implementation of Key Collaboration Practices
Key practice e-Payroll implementation
Establishing a collaborative OPM has successfully established a
collaborative management structure management structure.
Maintaining collaborative OPM is more successful at maintaining
collaborative
relationships relationships with payroll providers than with other
stakeholders.
Contributing resources equitably OPM has developed a plan to ensure that
resources are contributed equitably.
Facilitating communication and outreach
Payroll providers report that OPM's efforts at communication and outreach
have been effective.
Adopting a common set of OPM has begun an effort to collect views on common
standards
standards but faces potential challenges in reaching governmentwide
agreement.
Source: GAO.
o Establishing a collaborative management structure. OPM has provided
guidance to its partner agencies that defines roles and responsibilities
and specifies those partners' responsibilities with respect to their
collaborative relationships with their payroll customers. For example, in
memorandums of agreement with the four selected payroll providers, OPM
defined the structure that would be used to manage the project. The
management structure includes the four provider agencies, a payroll
advisory council with 11 representatives from different federal agencies,
different functional areas (such as human resources, IT, and financial
management), and OMB. In addition, OPM developed a plan that outlines the
content of service level agreements between payroll providers and their
agency clients. According to the plan, such agreements should detail both
the scope of client services and performance expectations for the service
provider and should specifically address issues such as change management,
billing procedures, and support services. Officials from the Department of
Agriculture's National Finance Center and the Department of the Interior's
National Business Center, two of OPM's four partner agencies, cited this
project management approach as successful in promoting collaboration on
the e-Payroll project.
o Maintaining collaborative relationships. OPM has taken steps to develop
and maintain collaborative relationships with its partners and other
federal stakeholders. OPM established a group with representatives from
the four payroll providers, which holds regular meetings to address
project status and other initiative issues. Officials from three of the
four provider agencies told us that this group has been very effective in
affording them the opportunity to discuss common issues and concerns.20
Specifically, Interior's National Business Center representative told us
that this forum allowed the federal payroll providers to discuss
standardizing and implementing two recent governmentwide payroll
actions-the initiation of flexible spending accounts (a program of
optional pretax health and dependent care savings accounts for federal
employees) and a retroactive federal pay raise for the first part of
2003-resulting in a consolidated governmentwide time frame for the
availability of these features.
In order to elicit full participation, all partners in a collaborative
undertaking need to share a common vision and work in a climate of trust
and respect. One way to create such an environment is by ensuring
20The fourth provider, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, did not
respond to our request for information.
that all stakeholder concerns are articulated and fully addressed.
However, according to one stakeholder, OPM has not always effectively
addressed concerns by agencies being affected by e-Payroll consolidation.
Specifically, the director of the Payroll/HR Systems Service at the
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) told us that his department was not
allowed enough time to make a complete evaluation of payroll providers
before OPM finalized its decision to align the department with the Defense
Finance and Accounting Service. VA had advised OPM in writing that it had
concerns that needed to be resolved before the selection of a provider was
finalized. According to VA projections, migrating to the Defense Finance
and Accounting Service would be both costly and inefficient, because VA
would have to separate its payroll system from its human resources system.
However, OPM's written responses did not directly address VA's concerns
but instead emphasized that time available to reconsider the decision was
short. For example, in a letter dated January 14, 2003, OPM informed VA
that a business case justifying VA's position would have to be prepared
and submitted within 2 days. While OPM exercises the ultimate authority in
deciding how payroll operations are to be consolidated, it could put
e-Payroll's overall schedule at risk by not fully considering and
responding to stakeholder concerns.
o Contributing resources equitably. OPM has instituted a collaborative
strategy for financing the e-Payroll project that includes guidance
identifying the responsibilities of partner and other participating
agencies for contributing resources for the e-Payroll initiative. For
example, OPM's plan for financing the consolidation of payroll service
providers and the migration of agency payroll operations to designated
service providers states that the provider agencies are to recover the
costs of their operations from fees levied on their customers as defined
in service level agreements. In addition, OPM's plan relied on OMB to
apportion funds to the providers for migration expenses by identifying
agency funding contributions in fiscal years 2003 and 2004. The intent was
to redirect funding that had been planned for upgrades or other payroll
system operations and maintenance to support the governmentwide effort. In
keeping with this intent, officials from Energy, Health and Human
Services, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported that they were
using funds earmarked for upgrade and maintenance of payroll systems to
finance migration costs.
o Facilitating communication and outreach. The e-Payroll management team
has taken steps to facilitate effective communication of project
status and needs. For example, OPM began by inventorying stakeholders to
identify those affected by the initiative and then developed a plan for
communicating with them. The resulting communications plan identified a
variety of methods for conveying project information to affected parties,
including direct meetings, workshops, telephone contact, and formal
letters to agency heads regarding significant decisions relating to the
initiative. OPM also held a governmentwide forum intended to provide
information about e-Payroll to agencies and facilitate interaction among
the executive branch agencies and the selected providers. In addition,
three of the four designated payroll providers reported that attending the
quarterly provider conferences and participating in biweekly conference
calls sponsored by OPM were effective communications mechanisms.
o Adopting a common set of standards. Consolidating the existing 22
federal payroll systems into a single system requires that OPM develop a
common set of payroll standards that will meet the requirements of
multiple federal agencies with different missions and legislated payroll
constraints. OPM has taken steps to help ensure that federal agencies have
input on development of a common set of standards. For example, OPM
commissioned a study to identify significant differences among the payroll
processes of the existing 22 providers. Representatives of agencies from a
cross section of the executive branch, including all four of OPM's
partners-the selected payroll providers-participated in the study. The
resulting 87 payroll standardization opportunities were provided to
federal agencies for review and comment.21 OPM received approximately 250
comments and suggestions for action from federal agencies on the
standardization opportunities that it identified. These agencies' comments
show the complexity of the standardization tasks that OPM and its partners
have yet to undertake-from proposing new legislation to addressing union
negotiations. According to OPM officials, a focus group was established in
July 2003 to further analyze the previously identified opportunities and
develop recommended solutions. Officials told us that standardizing the
payroll process is an ongoing process and that work to develop a single
payroll standard would continue with input from other federal agencies.
21Examples of "standardization opportunities" include such things as
establishing a standard official payday each pay period for the entire
federal government and consolidating all employees to one biweekly pay
cycle.
Although OPM has involved its partners and other federal agencies in the
process of identifying opportunities for standardization, it still faces
the challenging task of getting federal agencies to reach agreement on a
single payroll standard that they all can use. As agencies migrate to
consolidated payroll providers, changes may need to be made either to the
providers' payroll processes and standards-so that the various payroll
mandates can be accommodated-or to the mandated requirements themselves,
so that agencies can conform to a single standard. Fully identifying and
assessing the impact on agencies of potential payroll standards will be a
challenging effort. For example, VA's Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary
for Finance expressed concern that OPM officials might not appreciate the
complexities of administering payroll systems under Title 38 of the United
States Code22-the legislation that governs VA's payroll processes-and that
changes would be necessary to support VA's payroll processing once it
migrates to its new payroll provider. According to an OPM study, in
addition to Title 38, there at least 13 other sets of legislated federal
payroll provisions that will need to be reviewed and addressed before
consolidated federal payroll systems can be implemented.23 Without
effective interagency collaboration, changes mandated by OPM may not fully
address agencies' individual payroll processing requirements, increasing
the risk that agencies will not be able to migrate as planned to their new
payroll providers. In commenting on a draft of this report, OPM officials
stated that they have taken steps to ensure that a collaborative process
was in place for payroll standards development, based on establishing a
focus group of cross-agency representatives within the Payroll Advisory
Council. If supported by a detailed strategy, OPM's action may help to
address this issue.
The e-Payroll initiative has achieved initial progress based in part on an
effective collaborative management structure and collaborative
relationships with its designated payroll providers. However, the issue
regarding consideration of VA's concerns could have an adverse impact on
the success of the project as migration of agency payroll operations
progresses. Furthermore, unless OPM places increased emphasis on
collaboration as governmentwide standards are developed and
2238 U.S.C., Part V, Chapter 74-Veterans Health Administration-Personnel.
23Office of Personnel Management, e-Payroll Initiative: Plan for
Standardization of Federal Payroll Policy, Revision 1 (Washington, D.C.:
Jan. 13, 2003).
consolidation of payroll systems progresses, it will be at increased risk
that the consolidated systems will not meet the needs of all federal
agencies.
Geospatial One-Stop Ensuring effective collaboration on Geospatial
One-Stop is a significant challenge. In addition to the eight federal
agencies designated as partners, the project's stakeholders include
thousands of state and local governments, as well as other nonpartner
federal agencies. State and local agencies perform key functions in
collecting and managing geospatial data-it is estimated that about 90
percent of geospatial data is collected by state and local governments,
and that those governments invest over twice as much as the federal
government to collect and maintain such data. Consequently, states' and
localities' participation in the Geospatial One-Stop initiative is
critical. Interior has taken steps to include nonfederal stakeholders on
the project. For example, it established an intergovernmental management
structure, conducted briefings at meetings and conferences across the
country to promote stakeholder participation, appointed an outreach
coordinator to facilitate communication with stakeholders, and included
states and localities in drafting national geospatial data standards.
However, given the large number of stakeholders, Interior has not yet
ensured that many states and localities are involved in the project. In
addition, although Interior has collaborated with its partners and other
stakeholders in developing draft geospatial standards, it has not taken
steps to ensure that those standards will be used by a majority of the
project's federal, state, or local stakeholders. Table 3 is an overview of
the key collaboration practices as implemented by the Geospatial One-Stop
initiative, followed by further discussion.
Table 3: Geospatial One-Stop Implementation of Key Collaboration Practices
Key practice Geospatial One-Stop implementation
Establishing a collaborative Interior has established a board of directors
that management structure includes federal and nonfederal stakeholders.
Maintaining collaborative Partners and stakeholders largely have not
established
relationships formal agreements outlining a common vision and roles and
responsibilities for collaborative relationships.
Contributing resources equitably Although partner agencies initially did
not contribute funds as projected, they have made planned contributions in
fiscal year 2003.
Facilitating communication and Despite a range of outreach efforts, many
state and
outreach local governments are not participating, apparently because they
do not perceive the benefits to outweigh the effort and expense of doing
so.
Adopting a common set of Participation in drafting standards has been
limited,
standards with many states and almost all counties and cities not
participating. Further, achieving consistent implementation of the
standards across levels of government will be challenging.
Source: GAO.
o Establishing a collaborative management structure. Geospatial One-Stop
includes eight federal partners and thousands of other stakeholders-over
3,000 counties, over 18,000 municipalities, and the 50 states, as well as
other federal agencies that are not partners on the project. To help
ensure that nonfederal stakeholders have a voice in the direction of the
project, Interior established an intergovernmental board of directors that
votes on significant decisions, such as selection of the portal
architecture and establishment of project schedule dates. Two-thirds of
the votes are held by state, local, and tribal representatives, and
one-third by federal partner agencies. Establishment of the board has
worked well to facilitate collaborative intergovernmental management and
oversight of the Geospatial One-Stop initiative. For example, at recent
board meetings, members discussed issues such as the status of the
initiative, standards concerns, and the management structure of the
initiative as reflected in its most recent business case. The
representative to the board from the National States Geographic
Information Council told us that state, county, and municipal levels of
government were well represented and played a
useful role in providing alternative views about the direction of the
initiative.24
o Maintaining collaborative relationships. While Geospatial One-Stop has
established a management structure to facilitate collaboration, it has
made less progress in defining working relationships among its
collaborative partners. One positive step was the development of a charter
for the project's board of directors, which discusses authority,
responsibilities, voting procedures, and coordinating mechanisms for the
board members. The charter was signed by each of the board's members.
However, at the time of our review, other than this charter, only one
memorandum of understanding had been established regarding collaborative
relationships-an agreement on coordinating GIS standards related to
homeland security, which was signed by the Federal Geographic Data
Committee, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the National Imagery and
Mapping Agency. Without formal agreements among the Geospatial One-Stop
project partners, it may be difficult to sustain a shared vision for the
project and ensure that progress is being made toward achieving its
objectives.
o Contributing resources equitably. While Geospatial One-Stop initially
had difficulty obtaining resource contributions from federal partner
agencies, these early problems have largely been resolved. According to
the executive director, partner agencies did not contribute funds for
fiscal year 2002 as had been projected in the project's capital asset
plan, even though the agencies had been involved in preparing the plan.
Instead, Interior provided all fiscal year 2002 funds for the project. For
fiscal year 2003, the capital asset plan estimated that Interior would
contribute about $2.2 million, while the other seven partner agencies
would contribute the remaining $6.2 million. According to a project
official, all agencies have made their planned contributions. The
availability of funds from partner agencies in fiscal year 2003 has
allowed Geospatial One-Stop to complete several tasks on schedule, such as
deploying the initial version of the www.geodata.gov portal and submitting
draft national geospatial data standards to the American National
Standards Institute.
24The National States Geographic Information Council is an organization of
states that promotes the adoption and use of geographic information
technologies. Members include state GIS coordinators, senior state GIS
managers, and representatives from federal agencies, local government, the
private sector, academia, and other professional organizations.
o Facilitating communication and outreach. The Geospatial One-Stop
project team uses a number of different mechanisms to communicate
information about the project to potential stakeholders and the public.
For example, the project management team established a Web site that
provides information such as minutes of the board of directors meetings,
links to partners' and other stakeholders' Web sites, geospatial data
standards, and the most recent Geospatial One-Stop business case. The
executive director and other Geospatial One-Stop project members also
provide briefings and question-and-answer sessions at conferences and
participate in other forums to provide information about the project to
other stakeholders. The project's executive director attended the midyear
meeting of the National States Geographic Information Council, where he
provided a briefing and a luncheon talk about Geospatial One-Stop to all
attendees and addressed the attendees' questions and concerns. In
addition, the initiative's project team, in conjunction with the National
Association of Counties, the National League of Cities, and the
International City/County Managers Association, conducted a survey of
local governments to gather information about the extent of respondents'
use of geospatial data and the reasons why such data are not being used
more extensively by those governments.
Despite these measures, according to state GIS officials the project has
not yet gained participation from other governments because they may not
perceive it to be beneficial to undertake the effort and expense of
documenting and making available local geospatial data for inclusion in
the www.geodata.gov portal. For example, the executive director of
Vermont's Center for Geographic Information, Inc., told us that he did not
know whether Vermont's geospatial data holdings were being considered for
inclusion in Geospatial One-Stop and that the benefits of participation
had not been well communicated. In addition, Montana's GIS coordinator
told us that Montana had not yet committed to participate in the project
and that state government officials did not understand the benefits of
participating. According to the Geospatial One-Stop Capital Asset Plan,
Interior is planning to provide incentives for state, local, and tribal
governments to participate, although the project's executive director told
us that carrying out these plans is contingent on approval of funding.
Also, in a draft of Interior's fiscal year 2005 plan, several planned
actions to accomplish these tasks have been identified. Planned actions
include providing funding to help state, local, and tribal organizations
to become more engaged in intergovernmental geospatial activities and
establishing a liaison
program with funding to local stakeholder associations to work with
Geospatial One-Stop and serve as a liaison between federal agencies and
those associations. In addition, according to the Geospatial One-Stop
outreach coordinator, other efforts not provided in the initiative's
capital asset plans include identifying opportunities to promote
geospatial information as part of the state and local government policy
efforts and enhance outreach in other areas of the project, such as
standards development and management of the portal. However, there are no
plans to develop a formal outreach plan for the Geospatial One-Stop
initiative. Unless a detailed plan is documented and implemented for
conducting effective outreach, state and local geospatial information may
remain inaccessible through the Geospatial One-Stop portal, significantly
reducing the usefulness of the portal as a central access point for such
data.
o Adopting a common set of standards. Interior has taken steps to
collaboratively develop a set of basic standards to support the collection
of interoperable geospatial data for the Geospatial One-Stop initiative.
Specifically, project participants have drafted standards for seven types
of data25 as well as a base standard, with participants from other federal
agencies, states, localities, the private sector, and academia
participating in their development. However, participation in the
standards-setting process has been limited. Several large nonpartner
federal agencies-such as the Departments of Treasury, Justice, and Health
and Human Services-were not represented on the standards development
effort. In addition, local government representation included only 23
counties and 3 cities. As a result, the risk is substantial that many
federal and local stakeholders may not adopt the proposed standards
because those standards may not meet their needs.
Further, definition of the standards is only the first step in realizing
their benefits; Geospatial One-Stop has not addressed the challenge of
gaining consistent implementation of the standards across governments-a
key factor in effective collaboration. Many states and localities have
already established Web sites that provide a variety of location-related
information services, such as updated traffic and
25The seven types are transportation, hydrography, government units,
geodetic control (supporting a common coordinate system), elevation,
digital orthoimagery (having the characteristics of a map and the image of
a photograph), and cadastral (relating to land ownership).
transportation information, land ownership and tax records, and
information on housing for the elderly, using existing commercial products
that are already meeting their needs. Hence these organizations are likely
to have little incentive to adopt potentially incompatible standards that
could require substantial new investments. According to Arizona's state
cartographer, many local governments currently do not comply with existing
federal standards because most of their GIS applications were created
primarily to meet their internal needs, with little concern for data
sharing with federal systems. If designated standards are not widely
adopted, geospatial data could continue to be collected in incompatible
formats and systems, preventing officials from gaining the benefits of
better-informed decisions about public investments in infrastructure and
services based on an integrated view of geospatial information.
While the Geospatial One-Stop project established a significant
collaborative management structure in its broadly representative board of
directors, the project has not fully adopted other key collaborative
practices. It faces significant challenges in obtaining participation from
thousands of potential project stakeholders and obtaining their agreement
on and implementation of geospatial data standards. Such participation
will be difficult to achieve without a more structured and rigorous
outreach effort to involve federal, state, and local government agencies.
Integrated Acquisition Environment
The General Services Administration has taken steps to ensure that a
variety of mechanisms are in place to facilitate collaboration on the
Integrated Acquisition Environment initiative. For example, the project
team developed a formal charter outlining the objectives, tasks, and roles
and responsibilities of project partners, and it is in the process of
completing implementation of memorandums of agreement with all
participating agencies to further define their roles and financial
responsibilities. In addition, GSA has developed a communication strategy
for the initiative to help ensure that partners and stakeholders are
informed. However, that strategy does not include key financial decision
makers throughout the government, although our research shows that such
officials should be informed of project status and needs on a continuous
basis. Finally, GSA's plans for developing standards for the federal
acquisitions process are in line with the key practices that we
identified. Table 4 provides an overview of the initiative's collaboration
practices, followed by further discussion.
Table 4: Integrated Acquisition Environment Implementation of Key
Collaboration Practices
Integrated Acquisition Environment Key practice implementation
Establishing a collaborative Interagency development of a charter
established a
management structure common foundation for collaboration, and the use of
subteams to develop project modules facilitates collaboration at the
working level.
Maintaining collaborative Effective collaboration mechanisms have been
relationships established, including memorandums of agreement that define
partners' roles and funding contributions, as well as regular weekly
meetings of business area teams and project managers.
Contributing resources equitably GSA has been successful in obtaining
allotted resource contributions from most of its participating partner
agencies.
Facilitating communication and A detailed communication plan and a range
of outreach
outreach efforts have been effective at promoting collaboration, but key
financial decision makers-the Chief Financial Officers-have not been
included.
Adopting a common set of The project team is planning to use commercial
standards standards to develop proposed standard interfaces and to
distribute them to the federal procurement community for comment.
Source: GAO.
o Establishing a collaborative management structure. The project team
established a charter for the Integrated Acquisition Environment
initiative that all partners and stakeholders agreed to during the initial
phase of the project. According to the project manager, the interagency
development of and agreement to the initiative's charter allowed the
project team to collectively establish a common foundation for working
collaboratively on the initiative. In addition, the project management
team established a structure of subteams responsible for leading
development within each of five project modules defined in the charter.
The subteams consist of representatives from at least 22 agencies who are
tasked with serving as the primary liaisons between their agencies and the
project management team. This well-defined subteam structure can
contribute to effective collaboration at the working level among the many
agencies involved in the project. Further, GSA is in the process of
developing a comprehensive change management plan to be completed in early
2004. This plan is to address stakeholder involvement through the use of
multi-agency, cross-functional teams at the executive level
and collaborative design of the system through business area teams
populated with partner agency representatives.
o Maintaining collaborative relationships. The project management team is
in the process of establishing memorandums of agreement with each partner
agency; these agreements further define each partner's role and expected
funding contributions. As of September 2003, memorandums of agreement had
been signed with 21 agencies, 3 were near completion, and 7 remained to be
completed. In addition, GSA officials reported that several collaborative
forums for Integrated Acquisition Environment stakeholders were in place.
For example, business area teams and project managers hold regular weekly
meetings, which serve to reinforce collaborative relationships that cut
across organizational boundaries. In addition, an Industry Advisory Board
provides industry perspectives on priority needs, requirements, best
practices, and trends. Officials from 10 partner and stakeholder agencies
that we contacted indicated that the project's collaboration mechanisms
were effective.
o Contributing resources equitably. To date, the project has been
successful in obtaining resource contributions from most of its partner
agencies. According to GSA officials, as of September 2003, 94 percent of
requested funds had been received. According to the project managers, GSA
anticipates that all participating partner agencies will contribute their
allotted amounts in fiscal year 2004.
o Facilitating communication and outreach. The Integrated Acquisition
Environment's project team has taken a number of concrete steps to build
communication and outreach among partners and stakeholders. For instance,
the team has developed a detailed communication plan that clearly
identifies their audience, as well as various communication tactics, such
as creating e-mail news updates, participating in "industry days," meeting
with agencies' senior officials, and contributing content to the press.
Project officials also established an online workspace where participants
can share information, organize conferences to share information with
private industry, and hold regular team meetings. According to comments
from several participants and interested parties, these strategies are
effective in providing necessary information regarding the initiative.
Interior's deputy assistant secretary for performance and management, for
example, noted that these measures have been effective at promoting
collaboration by focusing on sharing information and generating agency
support for the initiative.
However, the project team has not included all stakeholders that it could
in its communication and outreach efforts. Specifically, Chief Financial
Officers (CFO) of partner and stakeholder agencies, who make key decisions
about financial contributions to the initiative, said they had not been
included and consequently have not been kept up to date about the
objectives and requirements of the initiative. Representatives of the
partner agency CFOs provided suggestions that highlighted shortcomings in
GSA's communications with the financial community to date. For example,
Treasury's CFO noted that the specific objectives of the initiative should
be communicated to senior financial managers so that they understand how
the initiative will support the missions of their organizations. According
to the assistant CFO for the Department of Housing and Urban Development,
the project team could more effectively reach the financial community by
interacting regularly with the federal CFO Council, a mechanism
established as a focal point for financial management issues in the
federal government. According to the Integrated Acquisition Environment's
project managers, increased support from the CFOs could increase the
likelihood of partner agencies contributing funds to the initiative. These
officials told us that they are working to better include financial
decision makers in future project communications by updating the project's
communication plan to include agencies' CFOs and coordinating more
actively with the CFO council as new project modules are developed. In
commenting on a draft of this report, GSA officials stated that GSA has
scheduled discussions about the initiative with a cross section of CFOs
and plans to invite a representative of the CFO Council to participate in
the Integrated Acquisition Environment governance body. However, at the
time of our review, these actions had not yet been completed. Without
taking such an inclusive approach, the project could be at greater risk of
not meeting its objectives due to future funding shortfalls.
o Adopting a common set of standards. The lack of standardization in
government-to-government transactions adds to the complexity and
inefficiency of the current process. A primary objective of the Integrated
Acquisition Environment initiative is to establish standard data elements,
business definitions, interfaces, and roles and responsibilities for
government acquisitions. Achieving this objective is likely to be
challenging. Once agreed upon, the new standards are expected to
streamline the data handling processes, reduce workload, improve billing
accuracy, and help enforce data stewardship roles and responsibilities.
The project team's standards development strategy includes obtaining
comments from as many affected federal agencies as
possible, which is in line with the key collaboration practices that we
identified. Having begun by mapping the process currently in place, the
project team intends in October 2003 to begin using commercial standards
to develop proposed standard interfaces. As proposed standards are
developed, the project team plans to distribute them to all members of the
federal procurement community-128 agencies-for comment. The process of
addressing these comments and reaching final agreement on standards is
likely to be challenging, given the number of affected agencies.
GSA has adopted a variety of effective collaborative practices that have
contributed to progress in advancing the goals of the project. Like the
other initiatives, Integrated Acquisition Environment still faces
additional challenging tasks, especially in setting standards. Involving
agency financial decision makers could help reduce the risk that agencies
may not contribute resources in future years.
Business Gateway Collaboration on the Business Gateway project is critical
at two broad levels. First, several key federal agencies that are
responsible for business regulation-such as the Departments of Labor and
Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency-must collaborate to
make it easier for businesses to access and comply with their regulations.
Second, the Business Gateway project team must collaborate with
industry-specific groups that are the subject of business regulation-such
as truckers and miners-to ensure that the planned gateway will meet their
needs. In specific areas, such as development of the gateway's profiler
module, collaboration has been successful. However, on the whole, SBA's
actions to involve its partners and other stakeholders in the Business
Gateway initiative have not addressed many of the areas that we found to
be essential to achieving effective collaboration. SBA has not yet taken
steps to document project responsibilities in interagency agreements,
achieve equitable resource contributions among partners, or provide
adequate outreach to partners and potential stakeholders to ensure that
they are kept fully informed about the project. Table 5 is an overview of
the key collaboration practices as implemented by the Business Gateway
initiative, followed by further discussion.
Table 5: Business Gateway Implementation of Key Collaboration Practices
Key practice Business Gateway implementation
Establishing a collaborative A project charter has been developed, but it
does not
management structure define roles or responsibilities or establish
collaborative decision-making processes.
Maintaining collaborative relationships
Mechanisms have not yet been established to maintain collaborative working
relationships among partners and stakeholders.
Contributing resources equitably Rather than having partners contribute
resources, SBA is both funding the initiative and controlling decision
making, which does not encourage participation and collaboration.
Facilitating communication and Although subgroups have displayed effective
outreach communication practices, projectwide communication and outreach
have been limited, resulting in key decision makers not being involved.
Adopting a common set of The initiative has agreed on common standards,
standards adopting existing data and technical standards where available
and developing ad hoc standards when needed.
Source: GAO.
o Establishing a collaborative management structure. To facilitate
collaboration on the Business Gateway initiative, SBA developed a project
charter that addresses the goals of the initiative, its benefits, project
components, and critical success factors. However, the charter does not
define an interagency approach to managing the initiative, discuss
participants' roles and responsibilities, or establish collaborative
decision-making processes. According to the Internal Revenue Service's
(IRS) representative to the project, the charter contains no specific
assignment of responsibilities-it was developed only to document general
support for the concept of the initiative. Without a well-defined
decision-making process, including specified roles and responsibilities,
designated partner agencies may be unwilling to make significant
commitments to supporting the goals and objectives of the initiative.
o Maintaining collaborative relationships. SBA has not yet established
mechanisms to maintain effective relationships with its agency partners or
other stakeholders. Although it reached agreements in 2002 with four of
its nine federal partner agencies, those agreements specified single,
limited-scope project tasks rather than establishing working relationships
with a common vision for the initiative. For example,
SBA's memorandum of understanding with IRS was to develop a pilot program
under which small businesses could apply for Federal Employer
Identification Numbers via the Internet rather than by mail or fax.
Similarly, SBA's agreement with the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration was to develop a tool to help small businesses comply with
emergency standards. Further, SBA has not yet established formal
agreements with organizations that represent small businesses, such as the
American Trucking Association, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers
Association, or the National Private Truck Council-all of whom represent
the ultimate intended beneficiaries of the initiative's services.
According to the OMB portfolio manager for government-to-business
initiatives, the project has not been able to establish formal
collaboration agreements because key management components, such as
partner agency roles and responsibilities, have not yet been defined.
Without well-defined mechanisms for collaboration, the project risks not
meeting the needs of partner agencies or gaining their commitment to
continue supporting the project.
o Contributing resources equitably. SBA also has not developed a strategy
for sharing resource commitments across its partner agencies. On the
contrary, the project manager's strategy has relied solely on SBA to fund
the initiative. According to the OMB government-to-business portfolio
manager, SBA's strategy was to promote collaboration by not burdening
potential partners with financial responsibilities for the initiative.
However, in taking on all financial responsibility, SBA also took control
of decision-making responsibility, which reduced agency collaboration.
Officials from designated partner agencies told us that because they did
not provide funds for the initiative, they have had little input in the
decision-making process and, as a result, do not have a strong incentive
to participate in the Business Gateway. Without the involvement of partner
agencies, the initiative risks not being able to achieve its broader
objective of providing small businesses with a single integrated source
for compliance with federal regulations.
o Facilitating communication and outreach. The Business Gateway
initiative has produced examples of effective communication and outreach.
For example, SBA designated the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to
take the lead in developing the profiler, which is intended to gather
information about a user's business (such as type of business, number of
employees, and so on) to aid in providing focused assistance. Based on
comments from participating agency representatives, EPA has been effective
at leading communication and
outreach for that task. EPA established a cross-agency workgroup that
meets weekly to discuss progress, make decisions, and address the next
steps with regard to development of the module. The profiler module
workgroup members also routinely coordinate via e-mail and telephone, and
EPA communicates updated information on development of the profiler module
at projectwide team meetings. Participants in the workgroup told us they
found that these meetings and briefings by EPA were an effective means for
collaboration. For example, according to the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration's representative on the profiler workgroup, EPA did
an excellent job of facilitating consensus as to next steps, specifying
what tasks were to be done by participants, following up on performance,
and relaying information or requests from SBA.
However, despite subgroup examples such as this, communication and
outreach by SBA to partners and stakeholders projectwide remain limited,
with key decision makers not having access to up-to-date information about
the initiative. For example, according to the trucking module leader, key
agency decision makers were not involved in meetings, conference calls,
and monthly workgroup meetings, and therefore agency participants were
limited in their ability to support the initiative because they could not
make resource commitments. More specifically, federal agency decision
makers were often not present at meetings where decisions, such as those
on the costs and schedule, were made for the initiative. As a result,
project issues could not be effectively discussed and resolved, slowing
progress and hindering collaboration.
o Adopting a common set of standards. The Business Gateway project team
has adopted existing data and technical standards when they were
available. For example, the team examined the technical reference model
associated with the OMB-sponsored Federal Enterprise Architecture to
identify relevant standards and ensure that technical elements of the
gateway were compatible with the Federal Enterprise Architecture. In cases
where standards were not previously defined, the project team either
reached agreement or began a process to reach agreement on ad hoc
standards. For example, EPA and the Department of Energy agreed to use the
same set of basic key words to direct inquiries by users on topics related
to environmental protection regulations. These practices are in line with
key practices that we identified for adopting common sets of standards.
The collaboration challenges faced by the Business Gateway project may
have contributed to the slow progress on recent work. Specifically, the
lack of well-defined roles and responsibilities may have inhibited the
stakeholder participation necessary to complete tasks on schedule. The
lack of shared responsibility for funding the project may have also
limited stakeholder commitment. In addition, limited communication and
outreach left key partners and stakeholders ill-informed about the
initiative's progress and development issues.
Conclusions Each of the four e-government initiatives has made progress
toward achieving its overall objectives. A number of early goals have been
achieved, including establishing Web portals such as www.geodata.gov for
the Geospatial One-Stop initiative and www.BusinessLaw.gov for the
Business Gateway project. All four initiatives rely on cross-agency
collaboration, and they still have a number of tasks to complete, some of
which require extensive interorganizational cooperation and could be very
challenging.
In our assessment of previous research into cross-organizational
collaboration, five broad key practices emerged as being of critical
importance. These practices include establishing a collaborative
management structure, maintaining collaborative relationships,
contributing resources equitably, facilitating communication and outreach,
and adopting a common set of standards.
When assessed according to these practices, the record for the four
e-government initiatives is mixed. In some cases, the practices were
effectively used, whereas in other cases project managers did not take
full advantage of them. For example, while OPM has taken steps to promote
close collaboration with its four designated e-Payroll providers, it has
not fully addressed the concerns of a key stakeholder that may be required
to make costly changes to its payroll processes and policies in response
to OPM's decisions. Interior has instituted a board of directors for
Geospatial One-Stop that includes certain state and local representatives,
but it has not yet established formal agreements with all of its federal
partners or developed an outreach plan to encourage a broad range of
states and localities to participate in the initiative. GSA has adopted a
variety of effective collaboration practices on the Integrated Acquisition
Environment project, but it has not yet fully involved CFOs from partner
agencies. Finally, SBA has not yet taken important steps-including
defining roles and responsibilities, establishing formal agreements with
federal partner agencies, and establishing a funding strategy based on
shared resource commitments-to facilitate effective collaboration with its
partners and stakeholders. Until these issues are addressed, the
initiatives may be at risk of not fully achieving their goals.
Recommendations for Executive Action
To enhance the effectiveness of collaboration as a tool for the four
e-government initiatives to use in achieving their goals, we recommend
that
o the Director of OPM (1) institute a review and feedback process with VA
to ensure that its concerns are reviewed and addressed before decisions
are made that could have a policy or resource impact on agency payroll
operations, and (2) ensure that a collaborative process is in place for
development of governmentwide payroll standards;
o the Secretary of the Interior establish formal agreements with federal
agency partners to clarify collaborative relationships and develop an
outreach plan for the Geospatial One-Stop initiative that includes
specific tasks for contacting and interacting with a wider range of state
and local government GIS officials to facilitate and explain the benefits
of broad participation in the initiative and promote the use of federal
geospatial data standards;
o the Administrator, GSA, modify the structure of its working groups and
other communication mechanisms for the Integrated Acquisition Environment
initiative to fully include the CFOs of partner agencies and better ensure
that agreed-upon partner resource contributions are made; and
o the Administrator, SBA, establish a more collaborative management
structure for the Business Gateway initiative by defining roles and
responsibilities, establishing formal collaboration agreements with
federal agency partners, developing a shared funding strategy, and
implementing projectwide communication and outreach mechanisms to ensure
that key decision makers at partner agencies are kept informed and
involved in the management of the project.
Agency Comments and We received written comments on a draft of this
report from the Director of OPM; Interior's Assistant Secretary Policy,
Management and Budget; and
Our Evaluation SBA's Program Executive Officer for e-Government. We also
received oral
comments from the Administrator of GSA. All four agencies generally agreed
with our discussion of the collaboration challenges facing e-government
initiatives. In addition, each of the agencies provided comments and
additional or updated information about collaboration activities
associated with their initiatives, as well as technical comments, which
have been incorporated into the final report where appropriate.
OPM stated that it was concerned with our assessment that e-Payroll had
not been fully effective in taking steps to promote collaboration with
partner agencies. In the report, we noted that OPM has taken steps to
develop and maintain collaborative relationships with its partners and
focused our concern on OPM's relationship with VA. Concerning our
recommendation that OPM institute a review and feedback process with VA to
ensure that concerns are addressed, OPM reported that such a process has
been established and that it would continue to hold discussions with VA.
In addition, concerning our recommendation that OPM ensure that a
collaborative process is in place for the development of governmentwide
payroll standards, we noted in the final report OPM's position that it has
taken steps to help ensure a collaborative standards development process
by establishing a cross-agency focus group to address standards setting
issues. If supported by a detailed strategy, OPM's actions may help to
address the issues we raised. OPM also provided technical comments, which
we have incorporated as appropriate.
Interior stated that it agreed with our assessment that e-government
projects face many challenges and that Geospatial One-Stop had made
substantial progress in achieving its initial objectives and goals.
Interior also acknowledged that it had not resolved all the challenges in
gaining greater collaboration on the part of the potential stakeholders at
the state and local levels. Interior stated that, in several ways, the
draft report had mischaracterized the Geospatial One-Stop project as being
"federal-centric." We do not believe that the report characterizes the
initiative in this way. Rather, the focus is on the challenge of gaining
as broad participation as possible from state and local representatives, a
task that Interior agrees is challenging. Interior's Assistant Secretary,
Policy, Management and Budget, also stated that the agency disagreed that
the existence of formal agreements is key to sustaining a vision and
making progress. However, Interior noted in its comments that it had
established memorandums of agreement or funding agreements with each of
its partner agencies. Further, our research into key collaboration
practices revealed that formal agreements with a clear purpose, common
performance outputs, and
realistic performance measures are useful in providing a firm management
foundation for collaboration.
GSA concurred with our recommendation regarding the Integrated Acquisition
Environment initiative. GSA provided additional information about its
planned activities to address our recommendation as well as updated
information about the status of the initiative. This information has been
incorporated in the final report as appropriate.
SBA provided several suggested technical corrections to the draft report,
and we have made those corrections in the final report where appropriate.
In its comments, SBA officials stated that the project manager believed
that slow progress in 2003 was due primarily to lack of funding from
within SBA and the addition of tasks by OMB, rather than to any
shortcomings in collaboration, and that efforts at collaboration had been
made until funding for the project became problematic. We have clarified
in the final report that the funding shortfall was within SBA and not due
to a lack of funding contributions from partner agencies. However, as
noted in the report, the fact that partner agencies did not share resource
commitments for the Business Gateway limited their overall commitment to
and involvement in the project, thus putting the project at risk of not
meeting its objectives.
As agreed with your offices, unless you publicly announce its contents
earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report until 30 days from
the date of this report. At that time, we will send copies to the Ranking
Minority Member, House Committee on Government Reform, and the Ranking
Minority Member, Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy,
Intergovernmental Relations and the Census. In addition, we will provide
copies to the Directors of OMB and OPM, the Secretary of the Interior, and
the Administrators of GSA and SBA. Copies will be made available to others
on request. In addition, this report will be available at no charge on the
GAO Web site at www.gao.gov.
If you should have any questions concerning this report, please call me at
(202) 512-6240 or send e-mail to [email protected]. Key contributors to this
report were Shannin Addison, Neha Bhavsar, Barbara Collier,
Felipe Colon, Jr., Larry Crosland, John de Ferrari, and Elizabeth Roach.
Linda D. Koontz
Director, Information Management Issues
Appendix I
Objectives, Scope, and Methodology
Our objectives were to assess (1) the progress that has been made to date
in implementing the selected initiatives, (2) the major factors that can
affect successful collaboration on e-government initiatives, and (3) the
extent to which federal agencies and other entities have been
collaborating on the selected initiatives.
We considered several factors in selecting the four initiatives for our
review. These factors included the number of potential collaborating
agencies, reported costs of the initiatives, variety among the types
initiative categories (i.e., "government to citizen," "government to
business," "government to government," "internal efficiency and
effectiveness," and "cross-cutting"), potential cost savings from
implementing the initiatives, variety among managing partners, and variety
among the kinds of stakeholders. Based on a consideration of these
factors, we selected the following four initiatives: e-Payroll, Geospatial
One-Stop, Integrated Acquisition Environment, and Business Gateway.
To assess the progress of the initiatives, we reviewed capital asset plans
and other project documentation, conducted interviews with project
officials, and assessed electronic services made available to customers to
date. In addition to determining the status of planned milestones, we
evaluated the progress that had been made in achieving the overall
objectives of each initiative within the framework of the e-government
strategy of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
To identify key practices affecting collaboration on e-government
initiatives, we developed criteria through a review of government,
academic, and private sector literature on interorganizational
collaboration. We provided these criteria to officials of OMB's Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs, who agreed that the criteria were
reasonable for assessing collaboration on e-government initiatives. Based
on these criteria, we summarized individual key practices (i.e., those
practices that were most commonly cited among our sources) into five broad
practices: establishing a collaborative management structure, maintaining
collaborative relationships, contributing resources equitably,
facilitating communication and outreach, and reaching agreement on a
common set of standards.
To assess the extent to which federal agencies and other entities were
collaborating on the selected e-government initiatives, we reviewed
project documents related to collaboration, such as communication
strategies and memorandums of understanding. We conducted interviews with
project
Appendix I
Objectives, Scope, and Methodology
managers for each of the initiatives we reviewed, as well as with
officials from the four managing partner agencies and OMB's portfolio
managers, to determine collaborative management practices that were in
place. We also contacted project officials from the initiatives' partner
agencies, as well as the National States Geographic Information Council
(regarding Geospatial One-Stop) and representatives from small business
associations (regarding Business Gateway). We collected information from
these entities to determine the extent to which key collaboration
practices were being used effectively for the four initiatives we studied.
Our work was conducted from December 2002 to September 2003 in accordance
with generally accepted government auditing standards.
Appendix II
Source Materials for Key Collaboration Practices
Following are the source documents that we consulted in identifying the
key collaboration practices described in the body of the report.
GAO Reports Program Evaluation: An Evaluation Culture and Collaborative
Partnerships Help Build Agency Capacity. GAO-03-454. Washington, D.C.: May
2, 2003.
Results-Oriented Management: Agency Crosscutting Actions and Plans in Drug
Control, Family Poverty, Financial Institution Regulation, and Public
Health Systems. GAO-03-320. Washington, D.C.: December 20, 2002.
Results-Oriented Management: Agency Crosscutting Actions and Plans in
Border Control, Flood Mitigation and Insurance, Wetlands, and Wildland
Fire Management. GAO-03-321. Washington, D.C.: December 20, 2002.
September 11: More Effective Collaboration Could Enhance Charitable
Organizations' Contributions in Disasters. GAO-03-259. Washington, D.C.:
December 19, 2002.
At-Risk Youth: School-Community Collaborations Focus on Improving Student
Outcomes. GAO-01-66. Washington, D.C.: October 10, 2000.
Head Start and Even Start: Greater Collaboration Needed on Measures of
Adult Education and Literacy. GAO-02-348. Washington, D.C.: March 29,
2002.
Human Services Integration: Results of a GAO Cosponsored Conference on
Modernizing Information Systems. GAO-02-121. Washington, D.C.: January 31,
2002.
Defense Health Care: Collaboration and Criteria Needed for Sizing Graduate
Medical Education. GAO/HEHS-98-121. Washington, D.C.: April 29, 1998.
Federal Agency Studies Congressional Research Service, The Library of
Congress. Federal Interagency Coordination Mechanisms: Varied Types and
Numerous Devices. July 22, 2002.
http://www.congress.gov/erp/rl/pdf/RL31357.pdf (viewed July 2003).
Appendix II
Source Materials for Key Collaboration
Practices
Federal Enterprise Architecture Working Group. E-Gov Enterprise
Architecture Guidance. Draft-Version 2.0. July 25, 2002.
http://www.feapmo.gov/resources/E-Gov_Guidance_Final_Draft_v2.0.pdf
(viewed July 2003).
Federal Highway Administration, Office of Travel Management, Office of
Operations (Department of Transportation). The Practice of Regional
Transportation Operations Collaboration and Coordination. May 7, 2003.
www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/RegionalTransOpsCollaboration/note.htm (viewed August
2003).
Food and Drug Administration (Department of Health and Human Services). An
Agency Resource for Effective Collaborations: The Leveraging Handbook.
June 2003. www.fda.gov/oc/leveraging/handbook.pdf (viewed July 2003).
General Services Administration. Building Blocks for Successful
Intergovernmental Programs. August 29, 2001.
www.gsa.gov/Portal/content/pubs_content.jsp?contentOID=119122&conte
ntType=1008 (viewed July 2003).
Hodges, S., T. Nesman, and M. Hernandez. Promising Practices: Building
Collaboration in Systems of Care. A special report prepared at the request
of the Department of Health and Human Services. 1999.
www.mentalhealth.org/cmhs/ChildrensCampaign/PDFs/1998monographs/v ol6.pdf
(viewed July 2003).
Institute for Educational Leadership. Building Effective Community
Partnerships. A special report prepared at the request of the Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs,
U.S. Department of Justice.
www.ojjdp.ncjrs.org/resources/files/toolkit1final.pdf (viewed July 2003).
Intergovernmental Advisory Board (General Services Administration).
Federal, State and Local Government Experiences: Foundations for
Successful Intergovernmental Management. October 1998.
www.gsa.gov/cm_attachments/GSA_PUBLICATIONS/Main_8_R2AV262_0Z
5RDZ-i34K-pR.doc (viewed July 2003).
Joint Chiefs of Staff (Department of Defense). Concept for Future Joint
Operations: Expanding Joint Vision 2010. May 1997.
www.dtic.mil/jointvision/history/cfjoprn1.pdf (viewed July 2003).
Appendix II
Source Materials for Key Collaboration
Practices
Joint History Office, Joint Chiefs of Staff (Department of Defense). The
History of the Unified Command Plan 1946-1993. February 1995.
www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/history/ucp.pdf (viewed July 2003).
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (Department of
Transportation). Keys to Success: State Highway Safety and EMS Agencies
Working Together to Improve Public Health. August 2000.
www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/ems/pub3/index.htm (viewed July 2003).
Office of Intergovernmental Solutions, General Services Administration,
Government Without Boundaries: A Management Approach to Intergovernmental
Programs (May 23, 2002).
Office of Regulatory Affairs, Food and Drug Administration (Department of
Health and Human Services). Partnership Agreements. October 2002.
www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/ems/pub3/index.htm (viewed July 2003).
Rinehard, Tammy A., Anna T. Laszlo, and Gwen O. Briscoe. Collaboration
Toolkit: How to Build, Fix, and Sustain Productive Partnerships. A special
report prepared at the request of U.S. Department of Justice, Office of
Community Oriented Policing Services. 2001.
www.cops.usdoj.gov/default.asp?item=344 (viewed July 2003).
International, State, and Local Agency Studies
Biedell, Jeff, David Evans, Daniela Ionova-Swider, Jonathan Littlefield,
John Mulligan, and Je Ryong Oh. Facilitating Cross Agency Collaboration.
Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. December 2001.
www.estrategy.gov/documents/fall_report-collaboration_121101.pdf (viewed
July 2003).
Center for Technology in Government. Tying a Sensible Knot: Best Practices
in State-Local Information Systems, Executive Briefing, 2001. University
at Albany/SUNY.
Collaboration: Because It's Good for Children and Families: A Wisconsin
Resource Manual. www.collaboratingpartners.com/CollabManDemo.pdf (viewed
August 2003).
Dawes, Sharon S., Theresa A. Pardo, David R. Connelly, Darryl F. Green,
and Claire R. McInerney. Partners in State and Local Information Systems:
Lessons from the Field. Center for Technology in Government.
Appendix II
Source Materials for Key Collaboration
Practices
University at Albany/SUNY. October 1997.
www.ctg.albany.edu/publications/reports/partners_in_sli/partners_in_sli.p
df (viewed July 2003).
Industry Advisory Council. Cross-Jurisdictional Government
Implementations. September 2002. www.iaconline.org/pdfs/X-Juris_eGov.pdf
(viewed July 2003).
La Vigne, Mark, David R. Connelly, Donna S. Canestraro, and Theresa A.
Pardo. Reassessing New York: A Collaborative Process. Center for
Technology in Government. University at Albany/SUNY. June 2000.
www.ctg.albany.edu/publications/reports/reassessing_ny/reassessing_ny.p df
(viewed July 2003).
Treasury Board of Canada. The Federal Government as "Partner": Six Steps
to Successful Collaboration. November 1995.
www.tbssct.gc.ca/pubs_pol/opepubs/TB_O3/dwnld/fgpe_e.rtf (viewed July
2003).
UK Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR) and
JSS Pinnacle (now Pinnacle psg). Partnership: A Working Definition.
Partnership Series, Paper Number 1. October 1998
www.pinnaclepsg.com/documents/consultancy/so_consultancy_publications_detr_paper
1.pdf (viewed July 2003).
Private Sector Studies Axner, Marya, and Bill Berkowitz. Promoting
Coordination, Cooperative Agreements and Collaborative Agreements Among
Agencies. Community Tool Box. University of Kansas.
ctb.ukans.edu/tools/en/sub_section_main_1229.htm (viewed July 2003).
Bailey, Darlyne, and Kelley McNally Koney. Interorganizational Community
Based Collaboration: A Strategic Response to Shape the Social Work Agenda.
Social Work, Volume 41, Issue 6, 1996.
Bardach, Eugene. Getting Agencies to Work Together: The Practice and
Theory of Managerial Craftsmanship. Brookings Institution Press, 1998.
Appendix II
Source Materials for Key Collaboration
Practices
Baum, C., and A. Di Maio. Sharing Risk: Government/Business Partnerships.
Gartner (www.gartner.com),1 October 25, 2002.
Cameron, Marsaili, and Steve Cranfield. Unlocking the Potential: Effective
Partnerships for Improving Health. NHS-Executive North Thames, September
1998. www.doh.gov.uk/pub/docs/doh/unlomain.pdf (viewed July 2003).
Chrislip, David D., and Carl E. Larson. Collaborative Leadership: How
Citizens and Civic Leaders Can Make a Difference. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1994.
Gray, Barbara, and Eric Trist. Collaborating: Finding Common Ground for
Multiparty Problems. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1989.
Keller, B. Breaking Down the Walls: Collaboration in the Public Sector.
Gartner (www.gartner.com), October 5, 2001.
Keller, B., F. Caldwell, and C. Baum. Mr. President, Take Down Those
E-Government Roadblocks. Gartner (www.gartner.com), March 2, 2001.
Mahoney, J. Public Sector: Beware of Incompatible Partners. Gartner
(www.gartner.com), September 18, 2002.
Mattessich, Paul W., Marta Murray-Close, and Barbara R. Monsey.
Collaboration: What Makes IT Work, 2nd ed. Saint Paul, Minnesota: Wilder
Publishing Center, 2001.
Peterson, K. Determining Your Role in C-Commerce Relationships. Gartner
(www.gartner.com), October 12, 2001.
Phelan, P. Implementing Best Practices for Collaborative Processes.
Gartner (www.gartner.com), October 22, 2002.
Scardino, L., and G. Kreizman. Innovation Funds: A Model for E-Government.
Gartner (www.gartner.com), February 16, 2001.
1Gartner studies are available for purchase at the Gartner Web site,
www.gartner.com.
Appendix II
Source Materials for Key Collaboration
Practices
Schumaker, Alice, B. J. Reed, and Sara Woods. "Collaborative Models for
Metropolitan University Outreach: The Omaha Experience." Cityscape: A
Journal of Policy Development and Research, Volume 5, Number 1, 2000.
Smith, Alan. Collaboration between Educational Institutions: Can Various
Individual Successes Translate into a Broad Range of Sustained
Partnerships? University of Southern Queensland.
www.com.unisa.edu.au/cccc/papers/refereed/paper44/Paper44-1.htm (viewed
July 2003).
University of Vermont. Strengthening Community Collaborations: Essentials
for Success. crs.uvm.edu/nnco/cd/collabh3.htm (viewed July 2003).
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