Issue 2: February 28, 2006

• The Buzz: Citizen Services Forum on Making the Government Citizen-Centric



• CIO Spotlight: David M. Wennergren, Department of the Navy



• U.S. CIOs to Share Lessons Learned with New CIO Council in Mexico



• FirstGov.gov News: FirstGov Offers RSS Feeds and Email Alerts



• Federal Web Managers Collaborate on Best Practices for Web Sites



• E-Gov Initiatives: 3 New Lines of Business in President's 2007 Budget



• Policy News: OMB Web Site ExpectMore.gov Informs the Public on Federal Programs' Performance



• Issue Alert: Web Services Leverage the Internet as a Shared-Service Platform



• Kudos: IAC names "Top 5" Excellence.Gov Awards for 2006



• Upcoming Events Calendar



• Comments: We welcome your feedback at dotgovbuzz@gsa.gov.

The Federal government is becoming increasingly concerned about raising the quality of service to citizens. To explore ways the government is becoming more citizen-centric, the GSA Office of Citizen Services and Communications will hold a half-day Citizen Services Forum Wednesday, April 5, from 9:00 a.m. to noon. The meeting will be held in historic Room 450 of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Speakers will address the ways in which government information and services are being made available to citizens through a multi-channel approach championed by the USA Services E-Government initiative. USA Services oversees the delivery of consistent, timely and accurate information via the award-winning portal, www.FirstGov.gov; the U.S. government's National Contact Center, which answers inquiries at 1-800-FEDINFO (and responds to e-mails to FirstGov.gov); and the Federal Citizen Information Center's distribution center for government publications.

Other topics will include the ways Federal interagency groups are developing guidelines for all agencies to use to ensure the application of best practices in all government Web sites and contact centers; usability principles for Web sites; and the many resources available to those who deliver services to citizens via any channels. Contact: Lisa Nelson at lisa.nelson@gsa.gov.

Dave Wennergren has been rising in the ranks as a civilian employee of the Department of the Navy for over 25 years. Now, as CIO reporting to the Secretary of the Navy, he leads the information technology efforts for the Navy and Marine Corps and manages a $6.5 billion IT budget.

Over the course of his career, he has received a number of Department of the Navy and Department of Defense civilian service awards. He is particularly honored to have worked for two organizations which have received the Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation.

And even though he has been an IT executive (CIO or Deputy CIO) for only seven years, he has already been selected as the Government Computer News Defense Executive of the Year, received the Computerworld Premier 100 Award and been counted-twice-among Federal Computer Week's Fed 100 individuals who "made a difference in Federal information technology."

In January, Wennergren was elected vice chair of the Federal CIO Council, a leadership position that requires close collaboration with Chair Karen Evans on a standards-driven approach to managing Federal IT. He will help set the agenda for the Council and manage its operations.

His goals for his term as vice chair are to continue to build upon the substantive contributions of the Council's members to expand the availability of enterprise-wide IT solutions, foster collaboration and information sharing across agencies and continue to improve the delivery of Web-based services to the nation.

"There's not an IT issue that comes up today that isn't something that crosses organizational boundaries," he said. "The Internet allows you the opportunity to collaborate, to share, to do things you could never do before. Everyone can be connected in a way that truly allows us to share the vast intellectual capital of the government. Our challenges are to move with speed and agility, while not doing things in a stove-piped manner."

Wennergren has been a staunch champion of cross-service collaboration within DoD. He is chair of the department's Identity Protection and Management Senior Coordinating Group, which provides department-wide oversight and coordination of biometric, smart card and PKI initiatives. He led the roll-out of the DoD Common Access Card program, which has issued smart cards with PKI digital certificates to all DoD military personnel, civilian employees and contractors - a population of 3.5 million people.

As CIO, he implemented enterprise-licensing agreements that have saved the Navy over $40 million in cost avoidance and are now providing similar savings department-wide. As the Department of the Navy's Critical Infrastructure Assurance Officer, he established groundbreaking relationships with numerous state and local governments to share information and support security preparations, vulnerability assessments and continuity-of-operations plans to increase national security.

Teamwork and collaboration have been consistent themes for Wennergren, a dedicated mentor for future IT leaders. "Success today is very rarely about personal accomplishment or ambition, but much more about the result of teamwork," he said. "What is important is what you do to help make a team successful, what you do to help empower others and what you do to help train the next generation of leaders."

As co-chair of the Council's Best Practices Subcommittee for the past several years he helped develop the Federal CIO Boot Camp for CIOs and deputy CIOs and brought together thought leaders from government, industry and academia in a series of best practices seminars. He also helped create a clearinghouse of Federal best practices for use by any government agencies.

He helped "write the book" about organizing a Federal CIO office. Along with former Navy CIO Dan Porter, Alex Bennett and Ron Turner, he documented their experiences and insights in constructing a CIO agenda in The Power of Team-The Making of a CIO. (Copies are available on www.doncio.navy.mil.)

Wennergren came to the IT field with extensive management experience and an understanding of how to work across traditional organizational boundaries to effect change. "I was interested in this area because of how crucial information management is to the transformation that government agencies will go through in the years ahead," he said. "Ten years ago, IT was viewed by many as a somewhat narrow, stand-alone discipline. Now people realize that every war-fighting and business process relies upon IT as a crucial enabler. Being a CIO today provides an amazing opportunity to help shape the government's transformation efforts and create the set of processes, organizations and solutions which will drive the successful delivery of services to our citizens."

Following the launch of the Mexican CIO Council on February 1, Abraham Sotelo, Mexico's chief information officer, invited the U.S. CIO Council to share best practices with his newly formed organization. Sotelo's goal is to strengthen the emerging role of the CIO in Mexico and provide a framework for coordinating E-Government efforts in that country.

As head of the E-Government strategy in Mexico since 2001, Sotelo has been working to develop a robust E-Government program as part of President Vicente Fox's Good Government Agenda. Since Mexican Presidents cannot run for re-election, there will be a new president in Mexico following the July 2 election. Sotelo wants to ensure that a solid E-Government foundation is in place before the inauguration of the new President on December 1.

Karen Evans, Administrator of the OMB Office of E-Government and IT and Sotelo's counterpart in the U.S., has agreed to provide the Mexican government with an overview of the evolution of the U.S. CIO Council since its creation by Executive Order in 1996.

John Sindelar, Acting Associate Administrator of the GSA Office of Governmentwide Policy and executive sponsor of the Lines of Business E-Government initiative will travel to the Mexican Council's March 24th meeting to present an overview of the U.S. Council and a discussion of the use of business cases in relation to the Lines of Business.

Lisa Schlosser, CIO of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Co-chair of the Council's Architecture and Infrastructure Committee, will attend the Mexicans' April 20th meeting to discuss the Federal Enterprise Architecture.

The U.S. government's support for the Mexican E-Government agenda is being funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development through the Office of Democracy and Governance in USAID's mission in Mexico.

FirstGov.gov, the U.S. government's official Web portal, now offers two new features that make it easier for visitors to the site to stay on top of the latest news and information from the federal government: RSS feeds and e-mail updates.

"Providing citizens with the most up-to-date information available on FirstGov.gov is a continuing step in keeping the Administration's promise to enhance citizen access to government information," said Beverly Godwin, Director of FirstGov.gov Operations, a division of the Office of Citizen Services and Communications, the nation's focal point for information and services offered by the federal government.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds are a method of summarizing the latest news and information from a Web site that can be read easily by many news readers. It is an easy way to keep up with rapidly changing government news and information.

Free e-mail alerts offered on FirstGov.gov indicate when new content is added to the site's most popular pages. Topics range from benefits, seniors, and Internet fraud to Hurricane Katrina recovery, the arts and parents.

An RSS feed is available for "FirstGov.gov Updates - News and Features" which offers important news and information from the government on such timely topics as a new government Web site reporting the status of federal programs and the top 10 consumer fraud complaints announced by the Federal Trade Commission.

Another RSS feed, "Popular Government Questions from FirstGov.gov," features the most popular and useful questions and answers related to the U.S. government, with questions like "Does the government owe me any money?" and "How do I find out if a product has been recalled?" being posted several times a week, with answers that link to official, trusted government sources. Each month will highlight questions related to themes such as "Your Money and Taxes" (February), "Travel" (May), and "Back to School" (August).

The Interagency Web Managers Advisory Council recently announced an upgraded version of its "best practices" Web site, www.webcontent.gov. The site-developed by and for government Web managers-is a central resource for learning about requirements and best practices for managing Federal Web sites. It provides quick reference to OMB's Policies for Federal Public Websites, provides guidance and recommendations for implementing the policies, and addresses most of the major topic areas that are involved in managing government Web sites, such as:

• Managing Content
• Usability & Design
• Management & Governance
• Evaluating Websites
• Using Technology
• Training and Events

The site was upgraded earlier this month based on direct feedback from government Web managers, input at Web manager workshops, suggestions from customer satisfaction surveys, Web-log data and usability testing. The new version offers expanded content, improved readability, new checklists and other implementation tools, a comprehensive "Topics A-Z" index, and improved search.

Webcontent.gov is managed by the Web Managers Advisory Council, a group of over 40 Web managers from every cabinet agency and many independent agencies. The Council was established by the Interagency Committee on Government Information (ICGI) to recommend policies and guidelines for all Federal Web sites to assist in complying with the E-Gov Act of 2002. The recommendations, issued to OMB in June 2004, became the foundation for the best practices on webcontent.gov. The group now serves as the steering committee for the 1,000-member Web Content Managers Forum, which maintains an active ListServ and holds monthly conference calls to share best practices among the government Web manager community.

The fiscal 2007 budget request submitted to Congress February 6 includes $64.2 billion for information technology and proposes establishing three new Lines of Business (LoB) initiatives. The three new lines of business initiatives for 2007 are described in the Analytical Perspectives that was released with the Budget:

• IT Infrastructure - to further refine the opportunities for IT infrastructure consolidation and optimization and develop Government-wide common solutions. The LoB taskforce will define specific common performance measures for service levels and costs, identify best practices and develop guidance for transition plans within agencies and/or across agencies for activities such as IPv6. Consolidation and optimization of IT infrastructure represents a significant opportunity for future cost savings. Based on industry benchmarks and analysis of agencies' FY07 IT budget submissions, the Federal Government could potentially save between 16 percent and 27 percent annually on its IT infrastructure budget and between $18 billion and $29 billion over 10 years by taking a more coordinated approach to spending on commodity IT infrastructure, such as help desks, data centers, and telecommunications. IT infrastructure consolidation and optimization case studies also demonstrate agencies could improve IT service levels and, when relieved of the burden of managing these non-core functions, can concentrate more on mission priorities and results.



• Geospatial - to identify opportunities for optimizing and consolidating Federal geospatial-related investments to reduce the cost of Government and improve services to citizens through business performance improvements. The LoB taskforce will analyze cost benefits, alternatives and risks, define roles and responsibilities, expected outcomes, performance measures, milestones, and timelines. The Federal Geographic Data Committee will continue to develop the National Spatial Data Infrastructure and … the Geospatial LoB will … establish a sustainable business model for Federal partners to collaborate on geospatial-related activities and investments.



• Budgeting - to build toward a ''budget of the future'' employing standards and technologies for electronic information exchange to link budget, execution, performance, and financial information throughout all phases of the annual budget formulation and execution cycle. As first outlined in the FY 2004 Report to Congress on Implementation of the E-Government Act of 2002, the LoB taskforce will identify opportunities for common solutions and automated tools to enhance agency and central budget processes. It will also:

-Promote integration and standardize information exchange between budget formulation, execution, financial management, and performance measurement systems and activities across Government;

-Institutionalize Budget and Performance Integration, including aligning programs and their outputs and outcomes with budget levels and actual costs; and

-Provide Government with enhanced capabilities for analyzing budget, performance, and financial information.

The six existing LoB initiatives-financial management, human resources management, case management, grants management, federal health architecture, and Information system security-are making significant progress in FY 2006, according to the Budget document.

On February 6, the day it released the 2007 budget, OMB launched a new Web site, www.ExpectMore.gov, where the public can review performance assessments of approximately 800 Federal programs. The assessments posted online are based on the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), a standard questionnaire with approximately 25 questions about a program's performance and management. The answers determine an overall rating of how well a program is performing.

Programs that are performing are rated Effective, Moderately Effective, or Adequate:

• Effective. This is the highest rating a program can achieve. Programs rated Effective set ambitious goals, achieve results, are well-managed and improve efficiency.
• Moderately Effective. In general, a program rated Moderately Effective has set ambitious goals and is well-managed. Moderately Effective programs likely need to improve their efficiency or address other problems in the programs' design or management in order to achieve better results.
• Adequate. This rating describes a program that needs to set more ambitious goals, achieve better results, improve accountability or strengthen its management practices.

Programs categorized as not performing are rated Ineffective or Results Not Demonstrated.

• Ineffective. Programs receiving this rating are not using your tax dollars effectively. Ineffective programs have been unable to achieve results due to a lack of clarity regarding the program's purpose or goals, poor management, or some other significant weakness.
• Results Not Demonstrated. A rating of Results Not Demonstrated (RND) indicates that a program has not been able to develop acceptable performance goals or collect data to determine whether it is performing.

All assessed programs are held accountable for having an action plan to improve their performance and management. However, sometimes a program assessment finds that a program is duplicative of other, better-run programs, or that the program has already achieved its original purpose. In these cases, the action plan might be to work with Congress to terminate the program.

To date, OMB has assessed about 80% of all Federal Programs. It expects to assess all programs by the end of FY 2006. Here are the results to date:

PART questionnaires for individual programs are accessible on the site.

The GSA Office of Intergovernmental Solutions prepares Issues Alerts on emerging issues for quick reference by busy managers

Background:
Governments are consolidating duplicative applications that use different operating systems to share data and applications across organizational lines. This requires an architecture that enables dynamic sharing of Web-enabled services. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Extensible Markup Language (XML) are common platforms across disparate systems. XML is accepted as the standard for preserving and communicating information via the Internet. Using these common platforms, Web services facilitate integration among governments and transactions between governments and citizens or businesses.

What Are Web Services?
Web services enable the communication of XML data between applications running on different devices. No matter where a Web service is located, as long as it connects to the Internet and adheres to common protocols, it can invoke transactions and initiate complex processes, such as authorizing credit card payments, or coordinating business processes across agencies. Benefits are:

• Web services allow a user to initiate a process or receive a response via the Internet through a number of devices. This is important for integrating parallel service-delivery channels like call centers, online services, and walk-in offices.
• A common component, like an authentication gateway, can be shared by many applications.
• Web services can be interoperable across multiple vendor tools and platforms.

Standards:
The following standards have been developed for message routing, discovery, and descriptions of Web services on the first platform for Web services on the Internet.

• Single Object Access Protocol (SOAP) - A standard for message routing to transport XML messages over the Internet and remotely invoke an application.
• Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) - A standard to discover Web services and Web service providers and combine them in a Web services registry. UDDI allows users (Web browsers, clients, other applications and Web services) to publish, find, and invoke Web services.
• Web Services Description Language (WSDL) - A language that enables users to connect to, query, and find Web services. WSDL describes what a Web service can do and how it can be invoked, and defines Web services as network endpoints, allowing the Internet to be used a shared-services platform.

Emerging Issues/What's Next:

• Standards: For Web services to work, governments must share interoperability standards, adopt common XML tags and build on private standards.
• Interoperability: Standards must be adopted and supported by a myriad of technologies, platforms, applications and programming languages. The Web Services Interoperability Organization is addressing this: http://www.ws-i.org/.
• Communities of Interest: Communities of Interest cross organization boundaries. Data standards and common components need to be developed for them.
• Security: The lack of security has been an obstacle to the wider use of Web services. Information and transactions associated with them are much more susceptible to hacking. Standards are under development to address the issue.
• Peer-to-Peer (P2P): P2P technology allows a group of computer users with the same networking program to connect with each other directly in order to access files and programs from each other's systems.
• Business process standards: Governments will formalize business practices, rules, and trust relationships among themselves and with businesses, to enable intergovernmental collaboration and public/private partnerships.
• Private registries: At first, Web services will be piloted in private networks to avoid exposure to security risks. Private registries are being developed by communities of interest that need to share a secure Web environment.

Conclusions/Implications:

• Emerging standards and technologies for security, are not yet mature. Security threats are a major concern for those using Web services outside a firewall.
• Success in using Web services will depend on governments' ability to agree to standards, adopt common XML tags, and establish trust relationships and common business processes with business and government partners.
• The Federal Enterprise Architecture and its five reference models provide a blueprint for citizen-centered and results-oriented services for all governments.

Additional Information:

• "Improving Public Access to and Dissemination of Government Information and Using the Federal Enterprise Architecture Data Reference Model" OMB, December 16, 2005 http://www.cio.gov/documents/Access_Search_Policy_12-16-2005.pdf
• Web Services Primer http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-wsdl20-primer-20050803/
• W3C SOAP Version 1.2 Primer http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12-part0/
• UDDI - http://UDDI.org
• WSDL (W3C) - http://www.w3.org/TR/wsdl
• XML.gov - http://xml.gov/
• Web Services Architectural Requirements (W3C) http://www.w3c.org/TR/2002/WD-wsa-reqs-20020429
• Web Services Activity Statement (W3C) http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/Activity
• U.S. E-Gov Strategy http://www.whitehouse.gov/OMB/egov/2003egov_strat.pdf

An industry affiliate of the non-profit American Council for Technology has named five federal agency winners of Excellence.Gov awards for demonstrating best practices in information sharing for federally-led IT program implementations. They were announced February 15 by the Industry Advisory Council's (IAC) Collaboration and Transformation Shared Interest Group.

The winners were recognized for their achievements in collaborative technology based on the following criteria:

• effectiveness of meeting the objective in terms of overall mission, business process and service improvement;
• effectiveness of the approach and degree of collaboration across organizations; and
• incorporation of industry and government best practices and standards related to information sharing.

The five programs honored were:

• Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs: Bidirectional Health Information Exchange, which creates a secure, bidirectional, real time exchange of outpatient pharmacy, drug/food allergy, laboratory results, radiology text results and demographic data on shared patients.
• Department of the Interior: Geospatial One Stop eGovernment Initiative, an intergovernmental partnership making it faster, easier, and less expensive for all governments to get the geospatial data they need for their missions.
• Department of State: Interagency Data Exchange Application, an interagency application that facilitates both the issuance of visas and the protection of the United States by checking background information on immigrant and non-immigrant visa applicants.
• Department of Justice: National Sex Offender Public Registry, the only no-cost government-sponsored application for citizen users that links state and territory public sex offender registries throughout the country.
• Department of the Army: Radio Frequency In-Transit Visibility, which uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags to provide the military services and Department of Defense organizations with worldwide visibility of military cargo.

National Association of Counties 2006 Legislative Conference
Washington, DC
March 4 - 8

USA Services Partners Meeting
Washington, DC
March 7

FOSE
Washington, DC
March 7-9

Information Processing
Orlando, FL
March 12-16

Designing for Survivability
Washington, DC
March 14

AFFIRM Luncheon: Business Transformation at DoD
Washington, DC
March 16

Fed 100 Gala (Federal Computer Week)
Washington, DC
March 20

GSA Citizen Services Forum
Washington, DC
April 5

CTO Summit
Washington, DC
April 5-7

E-gov Institute Knowledge Management Conference
Washington, DC
April 19-21

IRMCO
Williamsburg, VA
April 23-26

World Congress on Information Technology (International Technology Association of America)
Austin, TX
May 1-5

SOCAP International Symposium
Washington, DC
May 7-10

AFCEA's Transformation TechNet
Hampton, VA
May 9-10

GSA International Products and Services Expo
San Antonio
May 15-18

Spring Government CIO Summit
Naples, FL
May 21-23

National Association of State CIOs Mid-Year Conference
The Capitol Hilton
Washington, DC
May 31-June 2

ACT Management of Change Conference
Hilton Head, SC
June 5-7

Government Customer Support Conference 2006
Arlington, VA
June 14-15

AFCEA's TechNet International
Washington, DC
June 19-20

Comments: We welcome your feedback

Please send your comments, concerns, complaints and questions to dotgovbuzz@gsa.gov.