The remaining electronic government initiatives related to the 2002 Electronic Government (E-Gov) Act need stronger performance metrics to ensure the projects reach major goals and intended benefits, the Government Accountability Office said in a recent report.
The report, Electronic Government: Performance Measures for Projects Aimed at Promoting Innovation and Transparency Can Be Improved, calls for the General Services Administration, which administers funds for the projects and reports to Congress on their usage, to create more clearly defined performance metrics for the projects to be continued to supported, especially for projects that currently lack such metrics.
For the report, the GAO examined four of the 16 e-gov initiatives (FedRAMP, Citizen Services Dashboard, FedSpace, Data.gov). The Citizen Services Dashboard and FedSpace were cancelled in May when the project’s funding was cut by Congress from $35 million to $8 million.
From the report:
The projects we reviewed had made varying progress toward their goals and had begun to define metrics to measure success. Additionally, the projects could potentially lead to benefits including cost savings and efficiency, customer service transparency, and governmentwide collaboration and information sharing. However, defining performance metrics and aligning these with project goals would help ensure that managers and stakeholders can assess project results and provide credible evidence of progress, which is particularly important in a resource-constrained environment.
Full report:
