The House has approved a series of measures that e-government proponents argue would undermine a five-year effort to establish a governmentwide information technology infrastructure.
Provisions included in spending bills approved by the House in recent weeks limit the power of federal agencies to transfer e-government money. The provisions also cut funding for some e-government projects and entirely eliminate funding for the Transportation Department's Office of the Chief Information Officer.
The move to the next generation of Internet technologies is inevitable, but civilian agencies that planned to take it slow received a wake-up call last month. Karen Evans, the Office of Management and Budget's administrator for e-government and information technology, set a June 2008 deadline for civilian agencies to add the new technology to their network backbones.
The Defense Department has already started migrating from the current IP Version 4 to IPv6, the new technology. But a Government Accountability Office report released in May shows that civilian agencies have done almost nothing to prepare for the migration.
Writers in the first edition of the Group’s ‘Public Sector Bearing’ series include town hall e-Government practitioners who claim the cost of delivering frontline public services have moved up significantly in the last four years without a concomitant uplift in quality where it matters most. Concentration on ‘e’ channels have left areas of highest demand and highest spend relatively untouched, the report suggests.
Weiterlesen: USA:e-Gov't Practitioners Attack Lack of Progress in Local Auth. Modernisation
State governments are spending heavily on long-deferred overhauls of their Medicaid Management Information Systems (MMIS). Industry experts say they haven't seen so many procurements in years.
Between $1.3 billion and $1.6 billion worth of MMIS contracts will be up for grabs in the next 18 months, according to government market researcher Input. Through fiscal year 2008, $4.1 billion worth of MMIS contracts may come up for competition.
Rhode Island has a new and improved official state Web portal at www.RI.gov. Governor Donald Carcieri cut a virtual blue ribbon recently to unveil the completely transformed site.