Lovely named Chair of 2007 City and County Technology Summit
Sylvia Lovely, President of the New Cities Institute has been named chair of the 2007 City and CountyTechnologySummit being hosted by The Performance Institute in Las Vegas, NV. The Summit, which will bring together leading experts to discuss the latest innovations and techniques for enhanced performance, will take place from March 12-14, 2007 at the Mirage Hotel. The Performance Institute is pleased to partner with New Cities Institute which has recently been featured in Digital Communities Magazine for the work it is work in improving and creating “new” cities. Sylvia Lovely is president of the NewCities Institute, a national nonprofit organization that encourages citizens to get involved in helping their communities thrive in the rapid technological change and global challenges of the 21st century. Her commitment to the well being and safety of our cities and the people that call them home has shown in her work as CEO of the Kentucky League of Cities and interim Executive Director of Kentucky’s new Office of Drug Control Policy. To learn more about the Summit, please visit www.cityandcounty.org

Make Fixing Under-Performing Projects a Resolution This Year!
A Q&A w/ Dr. Frank Anbari, past chair of the Project Management Program at George Washington University. As The Performance Institute launches into our 2007 project management program, I
recently had a chance to sit down with Dr. Frank Anbari, past chair of the Project
Management Program at George Washington University. We discussed topics from Earned Value Management, techniques to fix underperforming projects and what 2007 holds for the field of project management.

Long View of IT Oversight
Like all agencies, the Food and Drug Administration faces the challenge of getting a handle on its many IT purchases. These acquisitions stretch across numerous programs and dozens of technologies. To ease the task of understanding and analyzing such investments, FDA’s Office of the Chief Information Officer uses portfolio management software. The office had been working on alignment of the IT purchasing process with business goals since 1999. In particular, the office wanted to improve its own process of developing the agency’s annual Exhibit 300 submission to the Office of Management and Budget. The OMB Exhibit 300 details how how IT investments map with agency missions. When done correctly, an Exhibit 300 can truly represent the agency’s investment management process. “If you have IT management policy practices and procedures in place in your organization, then your Exhibit 300 will show the evidence of that,” Sholtes said.

VA moves IT Development, Management Under CIO
The Veterans Affairs Department will centralize IT development and management under the department CIO, shifting from its plans for a federated model, VA CIO Robert Howard said today. The centralized effort will become permanent in April, he said. VA secretary Jim Nicholson recently signed documents, which VA will announce within a week, to bring application and enterprise development under the department CIO, Howard said. VA had originally planned to keep applications development with its health, benefits and burial administrations and place management of its IT maintenance and operations under the department CIO in a federated organization.

Negotiations Renew Hope for E-Gov
After five budget cycles into e-government, the Senate finally seems to be grasping the finer points of the administration’s effort to make agencies act more like businesses. ??For five years, funding requests for the E-Government Fund mostly ran into a wall on Capitol Hill. But this year, Office of Management and Budget officials say, congressional staff members for the first time did not focus on whether e-government is valuable as a concept, but wanted to know about benefits the initiatives bring to taxpayers. “This was the most progress we’ve made with the Hill,” said Karen Evans, OMB’s administrator for e-government and IT. The Performance Institute understands, acknowledges, and supports e-government initiatives that make government more accessible and transparent to the taxpayers.

Agencies Struggle to Defend IT Spending
Center for Project Management and Information Technology Federal As agencies and departments continue to justify the majority of their information technology investments, departments such as Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and the Army Corp of Engineers have justified less than half of their investments. This information was provided in a report that was released October 13 from the President’s Management Council. Departments must support IT investments with sound justifications based on acceptable criteria such as risk management, security and project management. They also have cost, schedule and performance goals, which measure project performance, called earned value management. EVM compares a work’s planned value with what was accomplished.

Bev Godwin: Serving on the Front Line of E-Gov
FirstGov, the official portal of the United States government is in plans to offer a trial program by which features such as live chats will be enabled to answer people’s questions. Also by the end of the year, Firstgov plans to expand its technology so that anyone can browse pictures of NASA as well as the National Park Service’s libraries. Bev Godwin, the administrator of Firstgov, explained recently that her job entails checking the content on the government’s 40 million web pages to ensure accuracy and that all content is up to date. The Performance Institute recognizes the efforts of FirstGov as a valuable resource in making the government more transparent and accountable to its citizens.

Users' E-Gov Wish Lists Shift in New Satisfaction Index
Citizen satisfaction with government Web sites has remained relatively flat through three quarters of 2006, but users have shifted their expectations from sites, according to a quarterly index released today. The American Customer Satisfaction Index’s E-Government Satisfaction Index shows satisfaction ratings on 95 government Web sites scored 73.7 on a 100-point scale, slipping 0.4 points since last quarter. The decline continues a trend of relatively stagnant satisfaction with government sites in the past year, said Larry Freed, president and chief executive officer of ForeSee Results, which helps produce the e-government index. The Performance Institute recognizes the importance of e-government initiatives in providing more information to taxpayers and making all levels of government more accessible.

E-Gov at Five Years: A Pivotal Point
In 2001, E-Gov initiatives were launched by the Bush administration. This year marks the five year anniversary of what began as  a collection of 24 agency projects, including the Health and Human Services Department's Grants.gov project, the General Services Administration's eTravel effort and the Internal Revenue Service's online tax filing system. However, E-Gov has been showing mixed results as agencies struggle to showcase measurable results and congressional leaders become hesitant to continue funding the program.

OMB Seeks FOIA info as Part of Annual E-Gov Update
Karen Evans from The Office of Management and Budget has released a memo directing agencies to list the steps they have taken to comply with executive orders directing the government to streamline FOIA processing. Agencies are required, as part of their yearly update of e-government projects, to address how agency’s information dissemination activities are coordinated with their Freedom of Information Act operations.

OMB To Agencies: Measure IT Costs, Savings From E-Gov
With Congress uneasy about the benefits and results of E-Gov, the Office of Management and Budget has directed agencies to being measuring how much money E-Gov is saving them. Karen Evans has informed agencies that by September 30 baselines cost estimates must be developed and projects that are due to be replaced must be identified. Also, the Office of Management and Budget is requiring agencies to perform three tasks:

1. Identify systems that are duet o end or be severly modified.
2. Develop baseline cost estimates by Sept. 30 for each investment identified under the first task.
3. Measure actual costs of the investments on an ongoing basis starting no later than Sept. 30.

OMB Taps Ciafardini for E-Gov Position
The Office of Management and Budget has announced that Andrew Ciafardini will be the new point man for improving the public’s access to and knowledge of E-Government initiatives. This new position will provide taxpayers more access to their government by informing more agencies on the benefits of providing resources online. The Performance Institute acknowledges the importance of E-Gov and has published “Creating A Performance-Based E-Government” and is available to download free at www.performanceweb.org.

E-Gov Scores Stabilize
The scorecard for the President’s Management Agenda shows that after E-Gov scores have stabilized and in some cases have seen a few improvements. The scorecard assesses agencies based on five areas of the President’s Management Agenda. The Performance Institute understands the value that an electronic government brings to tax-payers. The Institute has authored a “best-practices” report titled “Creating A Performance Based E-Government.”
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Senate Gives $5M to E-Government Fund
After two months of agencies worrying over whether E-Government is going to be properly funded, the Senate has increased E-Gov funding to five million dollars for fiscal year 2007. This amount matches the President’s request. Part of this money will be used to develop a government-wide E-Travel system which would eliminate the need for paper travel document and automate the entire process.

Slow March Toward Online Government
The Performance Institute has strongly supported the efforts to make government more accountable and efficient to tax payers through the process of E-Government. However, this innovation, according to the latest GAO Report, says that the reason E-Gov is on a rocky path is due to a decrease in funding. However, as this article points out, CIO’s are eager to further e-government and harness its benefits.

House Calls for Single Grants Database
The House has passed legislation to establish a public database for tracking federal grants, a move that advocates say will bring a new level of transparency to the government grant-making process. The Performance Institute acknowledges the actions of the House as critical for making the government more transparent and accountable to the taxpayer. The bill, HR 5060, requires the government to post such information as to whom a grant was awarded, a breakdown of assistance by agency and program source, all awards a grantee has received over the past 10 years and a list of dates and amounts of federal financial assistance the grantee has received.

Keeping the Trust While Under Attack: What State CIOs Need to Know about Evolving IT Threats
Dr. Eugene Spafford, executive director of Purdue University 's Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), keynoted a NASCIO teleconference yesterday on information security.

PA Transportation Department Awards Real ID Deal
The Real ID Act of 2005 calls for states to increase security measures around select identity documents, both for verification and storage, as well as providing a means for interstate verification of an applicant's identity. The National Conference of State Legislatures has estimated the cost to implement Real ID nationally in the billions of dollars. States must comply with Real ID by May 2008.