On Tuesday evening I attended an AFFIRM panel session titled "Best Practices in Developing Cross-Agency Service Centers: Success Factors and Pitfalls" and was intrigued by the discussion around the Lines of Business (LoB) initiatives. OMB is very serious about this, and has some very smart people leading it. Their insights and statements were very interesting.
The session was moderated by Fred Thompson of Unisys (who will soon be at the Council for Excellence in Government) and featured the following panelists:
- Dick Burk, Chief Architect, OMB (former Chief Architect at HUD)
- Teresa Sorrenti, Program Manager for the Integrated Acqusition Environment, GSA
- Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director of the House Committee on Government Reform (Tom Davis' committee)
- John Sindelar, essentially the LoB program manager, although his real title is a great deal longer and less informative
There were several highlights that I noted, with my usual emphasis on grants management:
- It was said that Karen Evans believes that agencies should keep funds saved by streamlining business processes (e.g. no agency funding penalty for doing good work!).
- OMB recognizes the overlap between the various grant initiatives and intends to do something about it, soon.
- Agencies need sustained, top-down management and attention to create the essential catalyst for change. (This echos the GAO report I referenced in my post on Tuesday, and good management change-agent practice.)
- Management of IT operations and development of business processes around laws is flawed, and is exacerbated by the short periods for which senior government executives serve. Rather than serve individual laws and programs, agencies should manage across those programs using consolidated processes and systems.
- Industry may have opportunities to operate LoB cross-agency service centers, and OMB wants to encourage it.
Dick Burk rightly noted that the LoB initiatives are not excuses for agencies to ignore the many other opportunities they have to streamline operations internally. Saving money is not the core objective of process improvement and process reengineering. Rather, he said, those efficiencies are desirable because they help agencies better execute their missions.
Someone asked what would come next, after the current LoB initiatives; what else is on OMB's radar? Burk's response was that the Federal Enterprise Architecture Business Reference Model identifies all the potential LoBs...and that the Service Components Reference Model identifies components that cut across agency lines, such as workflow, GIS, and so on. Later in the session, the following LoB's were identified as potential targets for consolidation at some level of government:
- Telecommunications infrastructure and desktop services
- Budget formulation
- Records management / document management
- Initiatives unique to each agency
John Sindelar provided a startling statistic: there are 498 duplicative systems in the Federal government. 498! This, it's believed, is caused by too little management of IT at the enterprise level and, to a large extent, the LoB initiative is an attempt to rectify that problem.
One audience member's question was truly excellent: Does the Hill recognize the need to reorganize the Executive Branch as a consequence of the LoB initiative? The response was that the Hill is waiting to see the results from the LoB, and gauging the position of the Administration, before drafting any concomitant proposals.
Pleasingly, the question of how LoBs will be funded was raised, and the answer seemed to be that appropriators need to be better educated about the value of each LoB initiative so that they can appropriately place monetary resources. The disconnect between government IT executives, other agency executives, and the Executive Branch is a classic case of common misperceptions of the same problem, and that hasn't yet been addressed fully. (To be fair, this isn't surprising. Government is big and complicated. It takes years to completely comprehend its intricacies, and most senior executives are around for no more than 4 years each.)
Another audience member asked, of the current LoB's, which would be best served by government providers and industry providers? Human Resources is seen as squarely within the government's control, whereas Financial Management could be provided by industry. Why? JFMIP. Because the standard is well-known and there are many products that comply with it, government can leverage industry investment. However, John Sindelar cautioned that industry is faced with a big dilemma: without more information from government, how can potential industry providers mitigate the risk associated with investment in development of a cross-agency service center? The answer is, they can't...which is why he hopes OMB will develop information upon which industry can better base these investment decisions.
I asked one question at the session, based on the GAO report on grants streamlining, and discussed briefly in a previous post: with the missions of Grants.gov, the Grants Management LoB, and PL106-107 all overlapping, how does OMB intend to avoid agencies understandably doing nothing until the situation is clearer? The answer is that the stakeholders are meeting to address that problem, but that it's a problem unique to grants management -- HR and FM are not affected by it.
All-in-all this was two hours very well spent. Aside from the really very interesting panel discussion, it's always good to spend time in the company of other AFFIRM members. As more cross-agency service centers develop, there will be opportunities for government and industry alike to benefit. More sessions like this will help everyone in more completely understanding those opportunities, rather than their impact being perceived solely as a threat.
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