Electronic Government

Performance Measures for Projects Aimed at Promoting Innovation and Transparency Can Be Improved Gao ID: GAO-11-775 September 23, 2011

In Process

The $34 million appropriated by Congress in fiscal year 2010 for the E-Gov fund was distributed among 16 projects in six investment areas, as defined by GSA. One investment area--Improving Innovation, Efficiency, and Effectiveness and Federal IT--accounted for $10 million of the fiscal year 2010 appropriation. This area included an initiative on federal cloud computing--the use of Internet-based computing services. The remaining investment areas supported projects promoting government transparency, collaboration, and public participation and a project for developing best practices for IT management. Among other benefits, the 16 projects are expected to improve data quality and foster cross-agency knowledge sharing and communication as well as increase public access and use of federal datasets. As of May 2011, the four E-Gov projects GAO selected for more detailed review had made varying progress toward their goals. For example, a cloud computing security initiative was still being developed; a dashboard for displaying target and actual customer service metrics had been developed in a pilot with four agencies, but had not been publicly released; a platform for government employees and contractors to use web-based networking and collaboration tools was in limited deployment; and a website (Data.gov) that allows the public to find, download, and use government-generated data had been fully launched. In addition, the four projects had defined performance metrics that aligned with many, though not all, of their major goals and intended benefits. Although the E-Gov Administrator (who serves as the Federal Chief Information Officer) announced the termination of two of the four reviewed projects in May 2011, the two ongoing projects do not yet have fully defined metrics that align with all of their major goals and intended benefits. Thus, managers and stakeholders cannot effectively assess project results and provide credible evidence of progress, which is particularly important in a resource-constrained environment. GAO is recommending that GSA ensure that performance metrics that align with all project goals be developed for ongoing E-Gov projects. In written comments on a draft of this report, GSA concurred with GAO's recommendation.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Valerie C. Melvin Team: Government Accountability Office: Information Technology Phone: (202) 512-6304


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