“It is a forcing function, at times, saying, ‘You’ve got to go down this path,'” he said today during a lunch event sponsored by the Association for Federal Information Resources Management.
Instead, “they’ve figured out how to keep doing those things they want to do within the confines” of e-government, Havekost said.
Agencies that continue to fund legacy systems cannot take advantage of new functionality, said David Wennergren, the Navy Department’s CIO. “This network age means you don’t have to build your own stuff anymore.” People nonetheless try to keep information technology systems within their immediate purview, he added. “Maybe we’re all control freaks.”
But agencies already depend on one another for services they cannot immediately control, Havekost said. For example, before e-Grants, agencies mostly relied on the U.S. Postal Service to receive completed grants applications.
When project officials tried to convince skeptical agencies that Web submissions would be more efficient, they argued that nothing would change from an agency control perspective. “We said, ‘We’re going to put an electronic black box in there that you won’t have any more control over than over the post office,’” Havekost said.
Consolidation of IT systems will benefit industry, too, despite the possibility that fewer procurement opportunities may exist, Havekost added. “Fewer systems that service particular business areas and that map to multiple agencies” will mean less administrative burden for the private sector, he said.
RELATED LINKS
- "Rumble continues over e-gov funding" [Federal Computer Week, Oct. 10, 2005]
- "The e-government main event: Congress vs. OMB" [Federal Computer Week, Oct. 3, 2005]
- "Summer of e-government discontent" [Federal Computer Week, July 11, 2005]
Autor: David Perera
Quelle: Federal Computer Week, 20.10.2005
