Browsing: OMB

A prominent business group is lining up behind the Obama administration’s bid for fast-track government reorganization authority. “This is a cause that’s ripe for collaboration across the aisle and in both chambers,” Business Roundtable President John Engler wrote in a joint op-ed with Jeff Zients, acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. “Waste and duplication in government are not the fault of Democrats or Republicans alone. Both parties share responsibility for this problem. Now both have an opportunity — and a responsibility — to address it.” Engler, a Republican, is the former governor of Michigan; the…

Federal program managers may be breathing a little easier this afternoon after the Senate killed an amendment that would have ordered the Obama administration to zap at least $10 billion from this year’s budget. Although the provision, sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., received a simple majority of 52 votes, that total fell short of the 60-vote supermajority needed to add it to a highway spending bill.  Under the amendment, the Office of Management and Budget would have had to use its administrative authority to “eliminate, consolidate and streamline” duplicative and overlapping programs singled out by the Government Accountability Office…

A revamped version of the government’s information technology tracking website released Tuesday provides granular details about investments and allows users to view funding by bureau and services provided. The three-year-old website, called the IT Dashboard, uses data from agencies’ budget submissions, investment data and evaluations by the chief information officers to track the health of federal IT projects. “By publicly posting data on more than 700 IT investments across the Federal government, we armed agencies with the tools needed to reduce duplication in IT spending, strengthen the accountability of agency CIOs, and provide more accurate and detailed information on projects…

Regulations.gov, the federal government’s main pathway for online rulemaking, has gotten a user-friendly makeover, the Office of Management and Budget announced this week. The revamp follows President Obama’s executive order last year promoting more public participation and includes “innovative new search tools, social media connections and better access to regulatory data,” Cass Sunstein, administrator of OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, said in an official blog post. You can read Sunstein’s post here; one innovation that he highlights is the ability to search regulations by broad categories such as as “defense, law enforcement and security” and “banking and financial.” …

There’s been no official announcement (to the best of FedLine’s knowledge, anyway), but the federal government now has a new top performance official, at least temporarily. “Acting chief performance officer” was the title that Lisa Brown used in a Friday post on the Office of Management and Budget’s official blog. Brown, whose Obama administration assignments have hitherto included assistant to the president and staff secretary, helped assemble the White House’s blueprint for reorganization of federal trade and export agencies. Until recently, the federal chief performance officer was Jeff Zients, who also served as OMB’s deputy director for management. But Zients…

The federal information technology budget for 2013 would invest in cybersecurity while remaining relatively flat overall, under the president’s plan. Overall IT funding for civilian agencies and the Defense Department would decrease 1 percent from $79.8 billion this year to $78.9 billion in 2013. Here are the winners and losers in the proposed budget: Biggest increases (Agency, proposed funding for fiscal 2013) *U.S. Agency for International Development, $112.4 million, 25% increase *Treasury Department, $3.6 billion, 11% increase *Education Department, $578 million, 11% increase *Small Business Administration, $112 million increase, 10% increase Biggest cuts *Housing and Urban Development Department, $392 million, 20%…

The Office of Management and Budget wants Congress to reconsider a proposal to reduce how much contractors can charge the government for their executives’ compensation, an amount that is currently “unjustified and unnecessary,” the federal procurement chief said in a blog post this morning. Under federal cost reimbursement contracts, agencies pay contractors for incurred costs, including salaries for executives and other employees. These costs usually show up in the overhead rates that contractors set. OMB caps how much contractors can charge the government for executive compensation based on what top private sector executives earn. Contractors can currently ask the government to reimburse up to $693,951 for each of its top…

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office is a relatively small operation, with just 220 or so employees, according to the most recent statistics. But it’s looming very large in the debate over President Obama’s proposed consolidation of agencies dealing with business and trade policy. Key lawmakers objected almost as soon as Obama announced Jan. 13 that he wanted the Trade Representative’s office in that new department. Now, dozens of business groups are also voicing “immediate concerns” about eliminating USTR as a stand-alone agency in the Executive Office of the President.  In a joint letter this week to Obama, they said the…

Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel announced Wednesday that he will release a new mobility strategy by mid-March to speed up federal adoption of mobile technologies and strategies. For now, the administration is engaging the public through an online dialogue to generate best practices and ideas. Anyone can submit ideas to be considered. One issue the new strategy will address is the creation of contracting vehicles for agencies to more easily purchase mobile technology, VanRoekel told reporters. The strategy will also address how to: ● Improve delivery of government information, products, and services through technologies, including those that are mobile…

Another day, another dashboard. One of the Obama administration’s hallmarks has been its fondness for such online tracking tools and a new one debuted this week to follow the status of major highway, housing and other “high priority infrastructure projects.” The site allows visitors to see where such projects stand in regard to federal permitting and environmental reviews. It follows a call from Obama this summer for agencies to handle those reviews more efficiently in the interest of putting people back to work. The site currently list 14 projects, ranging from a New York bridge replacement to the removal of…

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