Federal agencies expect to save $2.5 billion over the next three years by consolidating duplicative information technology systems, buying in bulk and eliminating failing IT projects. Those savings were identified using a new approach – called PortfolioStat – where agency officials review their spending for common IT resources such as email and desktop computers in search of duplicative investments and opportunities to consolidate projects, Acting Office of Management and Budget Director Jeffrey Zients said in a blog post Wednesday. OMB officials met with agencies’ senior executives, including the chief information officer, financial officer, acquisition officer and operating officer this summer. OMB used data collected for these meetings to show agencies where their…
Browsing: Jeffrey Zients
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…
Atingle with suspense over what President Obama may be contemplating in the way of a government restructuring? Keep atingling. It could be several months before the reorganizer-in-chief decides exactly how to proceed, one of the leaders in that effort said Thursday. “This is hard,” Lisa Brown, co-director of the Government Reform Initiative at the White House budget office, said in an interview. Obama “doesn’t do it lightly. He really is trying to figure out what the right answer is.” Together with Jeffrey Zients, the budget’s office deputy director, Brown was in charge of putting together streamlining recommendations for the president, who…
It’s not like the folks who run tmz.com and other celebrity web sites have much to worry about, but federal Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients probably made a select group of people quite happy today with the news that performance.gov is likely going public within a few weeks. The site, intended as the electronic linchpin of the Obama administration’s performance tracking efforts, has been up since last summer, but only to federal employees with passwords. Its public debut has been eagerly anticipated in management circles, but repeatedly postponed. Exactly why has been a bit murky, but Shelley Metzenbaum, associate director…
Contrary to popular report, Jeffrey Zients is not leaving the Office of Management and Budget for a top job in the Commerce Department, a spokeswoman said Wednesday. “Jeff is staying here,” the OMB representative, Moira Mack, said in an email. President Obama asked Zients, she said, “to take a hard look at how we can better organize federal programs and functions to boost our nation’s competitiveness and that is where he is focused.” Zients has been OMB’s deputy director for management since mid-2009, and also carries the title of federal chief performance officer. But his name has lately hit the…
Well, chalk one up for congressional bipartisanship: Democrats and Republicans alike agree that lawmakers should have a say in the Obama administration’s government streamlining agenda. “Reorganization of the executive branch is a shared responsibility,” Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., the respective chairs of the main House and Senate government oversight committees, said in a Friday letter to Jeffrey Zients, one of the White House management officials leading the effort. Issa and Lieberman go on to ask for “a tentative timeline for development and implementation of the reorganization proposal, as well as regular updates during the review.”…
Last February, the Obama administration used its fiscal 2011 budget request to roll out more than 120 “high-priority performance goals” for federal agencies to meet. Twelve months later, how are all those agencies doing? You won’t find out from the White House’s FY12 request. “Significant progress has been made on some priority goals, while weaknesses have been identified and are being addressed in others,” the document says. It then cites a couple of the cheerier examples—such as the Energy Department’s weatherizing 295,000 homes—but with no context and few details. The agency-by-agency list of goals posted on the White House web…
The Obama administration has made measurable strides in simplifying the federal hiring process, Jeffrey Zients, acting chief of the Office of Management and Budget, said Monday afternoon. More than 80 percent of job descriptions are now “short and written in plain English,” compared to 19 percent before the start of an administration streamlining drive, Zients told attendees at an Excellence in Government conference at the Ronald Reagan Building. Almost 70 percent of job postings no longer require essays, he said, up from about 40 percent beforehand. “Improving the hiring process will help us attract great talent,” Zients said. His presentation,…
President Obama is urging the Senior Executive Service to embrace his accountability agenda, according to a memo released today. “As the most senior managers in the federal government, you know how essential the work you and your colleagues do is to the nation,” Obama told more than 7,000 SES members. “You also are aware what happens when your best efforts are thwarted by outdated technologies and outmoded ways of doing business. “You understand the consequences of accepting billions of dollars in waste as the cost of doing business and of allowing obsolete or under-performing programs to continue year after year.”…
The nation has its first chief performance officer. The Senate confirmed Jeffrey Zients’ nomination Friday. Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag welcomed his new deputy for management with this blog post. Now we wait to see what changes Zients will bring to federal performance management. He’s had a successful track record imbuing positive performance into private sector companies through his work at the Corporate Executive Board Company and the Advisory Board Company.