OMB to give agencies plan to modernize services

The White House recently gave 50 of the largest private sector companies' CEOs homework to help the government change the way it uses technology. And now agencies have the tough assignment.

In 30 days, the Office of Management and Budget will provide agencies an implementation plan to incorporate some of the best private sector ideas, says Jeff Zients, OMB's deputy director for management and chief performance officer.

The White House will put all the ideas on Whitehouse.gov by Friday afternoon for federal employees, the general public and other companies to comment on or offer other further suggestions.

"We will take that input and figure out working with deputy secretaries, chief information officers and others leaders across government what the most promising ideas are for implementation," he says. "I think the 18 month timeframe is something that can be done in that time or sooner. We will make the implementation plans for each of those ideas and make them public, and that will allow us to highlight what are the key challenges, what are the key milestones and the accountability and ownership to make sure we drive those ideas to implementation."

The White House Thursday hosted the 50 CEOs to discuss how to improve federal government services.

Zients says the meeting is yet another piece to the administration's management agenda, which also includes agencies detailing three-to-eight high priority goals.

"This all falls under the President's charter to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of government services and to improve the service quality" he says. "What we learned today will help agency CIOs, deputy secretaries and frontline workers achieve those results."

President Obama says at the event in the White House that part of his pledge during his campaign was to change the ways of Washington. He says part of that is to improve how the government buys, implements and uses technology to serve citizens because now at many agencies it's unacceptable and "a serious problem."

"Now, I can say without any hesitation that our government employees are some of the hardest-working, most dedicated, most competent people I know," Obama says. "Government workers get a bad rap. They are dedicated; they put in a lot of hours and they care deeply about what they do. And they desperately want to provide the very best service for the American people. But all too often, their best efforts are thwarted because the technological revolution that has transformed our society over the past two decades has yet to reach many parts of our government."

The President wants companies from Google to Microsoft to Pepsi Cola to Southwest Airlines to offer best practices and ideas through an informal network to move the government out of its business-as-usual approach.

Obama spoke directly the roomful of CEOs before they went into three breakout sessions:

• Streamlining government operations, which Veterans Affairs deputy secretary Scott Gould and Defense Department deputy secretary Bill Lynn led;

• Transforming customer service, which Education deputy secretary Tony Miller and Interior deputy secretary David Hayes directed;

• Maximizing the return on investment from technology, which State Department's Jacob Lew conducted.

"Many of you are pioneers--harnessing new technologies to build thriving businesses; some of you have revolutionized industries; you've changed the ways that we look at the world," he says. "I hope all of you will continue those efforts at the forum today. I want the very best of what you've got. I want you to tell us not just what we can do to better serve the American people, but how we can do it. How we can do it without spending a whole lot of taxpayer dollars is especially what I want to hear from you. And I also want to emphasize I don't want to just hear your input today--we're going to need it in the months and years ahead as well. A lot of this stuff takes time to implement, even when it's implemented well."

The President points out several examples of why the government needs to change. For instance, the Patent and Trademark Office takes three years to approval a patent, and that is too long.

"Believe it or not, in our patent office--now, this is embarrassing--this is an institution responsible for protecting and promoting innovation--our patent office receives more than 80 percent of patent applications electronically, then manually prints them out, scans them and enters them into an outdated case management system," he says. "This is one of the reasons why the average processing time for a patent is roughly three years. Imminently solvable; hasn't been solved yet."

Some of the ideas that came from the breakout sessions include:

• Vision and leadership from the top are the most important things to make change happen.

• Create a culture of customer service at all levels of the government, and not just citizens as customers, but federal employees as customers to other feds.

• Embrace self-service like the private sector to create a hassle-free experience. But there needs to be a strategy to get there first.

• Start with small projects, learn some lessons and celebrate successes. And don't call the efforts a pilot or test-it connotates the initiative is temporary and could create resistance.

• Align business processes and get the business people's buy-in before you undertake a technology implementation. Keep the software simple and don't customize.

Overall, the focus groups offered about 18 ideas and the CEOs in all gave the White House about 100 suggestions.

Zients says along with putting the ideas online and creating implementation plans, he asks the CEOs to work with deputy secretaries and make other people in their organization available to create an informal advice network. He also wants the these private sector leaders to give the challenges further thought over the next few days and take a call from the deputy secretaries for a debrief-asking what was missed or what else occurred to them.

"It starts at the top and you heard the President's remarks today that he is 100 percent committed to a more effective and efficient government," Zients says. "As to how we work with deputy secretaries, each deputy secretary has identified three-to-eight high priority performance goals. Those will be published as part of the budget. We will work with the deputy secretaries to track progress against those goals. And where we are on track, we'll encourage and share those best practices across agencies, and if we are off track, we figure out what are the mid-course corrections to get us back on track."

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