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Stepping Out

Mark Forman has been handed the job of creating electronic government at the federal level, and the man who will be watching him is the President of the United States. Pressure? What pressure?

Mark Forman was appointed associate director for information technology and e-government in the Office of Management and Budget on June 14. At the federal level, he is the lead electronic-government executive. He will also lead development and implementation of federal IT policy. Forman will direct the work of the CIO Council, a federal body comprised of CIOs from federal agencies, and monitor and consult on agency IT efforts.

This is nothing new to Forman: He was previously vice president for e-business at Unisys and, before that, was responsible for IBMs global e-business strategy in IBMs Global Services Public Sector.

Government is also nothing new to Forman. Before IBM, he served as the senior professional staff member on the majority staff of the Senates Governmental Affairs Committee, where he had a hand in such federal laws as the Federal Acquisition Act, the Information Technology Management Reform Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act, while also serving as senior adviser to the U.S. Senate on IT issues.

Government Technology: Your role is to "lead federal efforts to fulfill the presidents vision of creating a citizen-centered e-government." That sounds like a tall order.

Forman:
Luckily, Ive got three years experience figuring out whats the best way to go about this. Thats one of the reasons that Mitch Daniel [director of the Office of Management and Budget] brought me in. Im not new to this business, and Ive been through a number of these working with state, local and other central governments. Granted, it was more on the contractor or consultant side, as opposed to being the one held responsible for doing it.

GT: Will you be giving equal weight to best practices from both the private sector and the public sector?

Forman:
No doubt about it. Were behind other governments, including many of the states. A lot of the studies that have looked at Washington, California and other states have shown that they are ahead of the federal government in terms of managing the transformation. Those studies are right on target.

GT: Is the transformation the same for the federal government?

Forman:
Yes, but the thing thats different in the federal arena is that we have to leverage the technology to manage our relationship with state and local government officials. At the state level, youre managing up. At the federal level, were managing down to 50 plus states and territories plus local governments.

GT: Is there a need for a federal CIO? How should that position be created?

Forman:
Our view is that the title of CIO should rest with the deputy director for management [of the OMB]. We think that for a very specific reason: We have five major management initiatives; e-government, IT and modernization are all integrated with those initiatives. To break out a separate CIO at the same level as the deputy director for management would be disruptive to the synchronization that you really need to [be] successful in e-government.
I obviously carry a lot of the key responsibilities for managing the transformation, focusing our energies and working with my counterparts that report to the deputy.

GT: Do you see the federal CIO taking the form of the former Y2K coordinating council with John Koskinen?

Forman:
Certainly. John was very effective as deputy director of management, focusing on modernization issues as well as other management-reform issues. Can you have a deputy director who can focus on modernization plus other management issues? Absolutely. Thats our position.

GT: A lot of state CIOs were pleased with the work done with the coordinating council. Some of that was due to the fact that they finally had one contact at the federal level and some of that came from the fact that they werent being told what to do. What are you doing to ensure that continues?

Forman:
Im fostering relationships with state CIOs. We have the federal CIO Council, and on that council is a representative from the National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO). Wendy Rayner is currently the representative from NASCIO, and Ive spent an extensive amount of time with her.

The director of the OMB recently sent a memorandum to the heads of departments and major agencies that creates an e-government strategic planning task force. One of the key elements that task force is focused on improving is the relationship between the federal government and state governments.

Ill be working with NASCIO, local government CIOs and organizations that represent them. Its not only something that well have some involvement with, but we will be directly focused on it as one of the four elements of the e-government initiative.

GT: What do you see as the future of electronic government? Do you see the day where a person can visit one Web site and handle transactions with the city, county, state and up to the federal government?

Forman:
Very clearly, but within certain areas. Lets take recreation; you may want to find what kind of parks and recreational facilities are available for camping during the fall. Most of the feedback weve gotten from individuals is that they dont care that its a National Parks Service facility versus a state park versus a Corps of Engineers facility. What they want to know is, "What have I been investing my taxpayer money in to maintain as a national or a public facility, and how do I get access?"

Ive talked to state CIOs, via Wendy Rayner, about integrating a lot of this. Thats what were working on. Were all in this, as the agents of the people, to improve service to the people.

I dont know how soon youll start to see this integration among all layers of government, but you will definitely see that in the initiatives that weve got working in the intergovernmental affairs arena.

GT: It seems that some of that momentum is starting with the states. California is working with counties and cities to go as far as actually hosting a citys or countys Web site through the states infrastructure. Do you see this partnership starting at the bottom and going up, or from the federal level going down?

Forman:
Its already started from the bottom, coming up, and my view is that weve been slow at the receiving end at the top, at the federal level. Thats part of what Im trying to accelerate; its very clearly starting from the bottom up.

The states and local governments are ahead of the federal government in electronic government. My job is to get us caught up, and that means that a lot of the types of things that youre discussing and suggesting indeed come from local governments and state governments.

The federal government has to align itself with those initiatives.

GT: How are you going to chip away at the suspicion that lower levels of government have about the federal government? Or is suspicion the right word?

Forman:
Ive been quite surprised that doesnt exist, at least in the electronic government arena. Ive had numerous [CIOs] at the state and local level tell me that theyre happy that we are embracing initiatives that theyve wanted to get the federal government involved in.

GT: You werent expecting that response?

Forman:
No, I was not. Clearly, were not going to create mandates for the states. Were going to facilitate the ease of doing business with the federal government for state and local governments. Our strategy in what we call intergovernmental affairs for electronic government, is to facilitate transactions and improve performance overall.

GT: Im looking at the last slide of your presentation at the 2001 E-Gov Conference and Expo, and the last line is "Prevent focus on just IT infrastructure issues." What do you mean by that?

Forman:
A couple of years ago there was a lot of discussion in the CIO Council arena and in the federal IT press about the need for a government-wide architecture. Much of the discussion was focused on infrastructure, as opposed to what more people would now call the information architecture or the business architecture linkage with the technology.

So debates arose on issues such as should there be a standard e-mail system for the federal government? Thats largely a debate between two or three big e-mail providers. The politics involved in that will defer from our focus on linking up the value of the Internet with the way government does its work to service the citizen.

I wanted to be clear with everybody that Im not focused on everybody having the same piece of e-mail software. Im very focused on how we leverage technology to improve the performance of government.

GT: What sort of timelines are you working on?

Forman:
The first issue for me is to identify our major initiatives and deal with each of the four citizen-centered groups that I mentioned. I believe we can have that done by the end of September, and get the buy-in from the senior agency officials.

One of the things the director did in his memo to the secretaries and agency heads was ask them to identify a direct report who would be the e-government leader for that department or agency.

The second thing is to build on that and put in place the management structure to really deploy and realize the benefits from e-government. I see that happening over the last three months of this year.

GT: Is there a timeframe for the task force being officially formed?

Forman:
Were under way. Im getting feedback from the agencies and departments on their e-government leaders, and were identifying the working-level members of the team. Were not reinventing the wheel. Were taking advantage of other peoples lessons learned. A lot of your readers are state and local CIOs, and I am excited to be able to work with them because they are ahead of us.

It makes it easy for me to move forward because theyre anxious; theyre waiting for us.