OMBlog

Disaster Relief Update

Yesterday, the President joined with local leaders in New Jersey to tour the devastation that Hurricane Irene visited on communities in that state. He delivered a message to those suffering in the Garden State, and those in cities and towns up and down the East Coast hurt by the storm: “The entire country is behind you, and we are going to make sure that we provide all the resources that are necessary in order to help these communities rebuild.”

This commitment to our neighbors in a time of need is one that crosses all boundaries of geography and political persuasion. As I wrote about on Thursday, it’s precisely this bipartisan commitment to help our fellow Americans that has guided funding for disaster relief for decades. And it’s what guided the Congress who included a provision in the Budget Control Act signed into law four weeks ago that allowed for the discretionary spending cap to be adjusted to fund disaster relief without an offset.

Last week, we told Congress that under this mechanism and as identified under existing law, there are approximately $5.2 billion in known disaster relief needs for fiscal year 2012 (covering enduring costs from previous disasters such as the tornadoes in Joplin, Missouri earlier this year), and that paying for Hurricane Irene will come on top of that. When I wrote that, we were still assessing what we would need for Irene.

Mid-Session Review 2012

Today, OMB released the Mid-Session Review (MSR), which updates the Administration’s estimates for outlays, receipts, and the deficit in light of economic, legislative, and other developments since the President’s 2012 Budget was released in February. 

The MSR largely confirms what we already know and what the recent CBO analysis showed: we need to get back on a sustainable fiscal path and invest in long-term economic growth and job creation.

As expected, the short-term deficit projection is down measurably due to a combination of high­er-than-previously-expected receipts and lower-than-expected outlays. The 2011 deficit is now projected to be $1.316 trillion, a $329 billion – or 20 percent – decrease from the $1.645 trillion deficit projected in February. As a percentage of GDP, the deficit is now projected to equal 8.8 percent, down from 10.9 percent projected in February. 

Improving Performance and Making Government More Accountable

Today the Administration opened performance.gov, a site that provides a window into the Obama Administration's approach to improving Federal Government performance and ensuring accountability of senior officials for achieving results.

Performance.gov tracks our progress on the Administration’s efforts to create a government that is more effective, efficient, and responsive. Importantly, the site is also a valuable tool for sharing best practices across the government – supporting learning and coordination across agencies.

The Administration is strongly committed to investing in what works and fixing or cutting what does not. As part of this effort, the Administration is leading the “Campaign to Cut Waste,” a government-wide initiative to eliminate wasteful spending and get the most for the taxpayers’ dollars. 

The Changing Role of Federal Chief Information Officers

Today, the Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum (PDF) that lays out key responsibilities and authorities for Agency Chief Information Officers (CIOs). These authorities will enable CIOs to reduce the number of wasteful duplicative systems, simplify services for the American people, and deliver more effective information technology [IT] to support their agency’s mission.

This memo builds on the work the Administration has done under the 25 Point Plan to Reform Federal IT Management, now in its eighth month of implementation. These reforms were developed to remedy what had become routine in Washington: IT projects running over budget, falling behind schedule, or failing to deliver promised functionality, hampering agency missions and wasting taxpayer dollars.

This situation is no longer commonplace. If you take a look at the achievements every CIO has already accomplished under the reform plan, they have fundamentally changed the way the federal government manages information technology. The memorandum will help CIOs deliver on key areas to drive results and yield an even greater impact.

Security Spending in the Deficit Agreement

A key part of the recent deficit reduction agreement is that the approximately $1 trillion in discretionary cuts are spread across the security and non-security parts of the budget. Since this is a complex agreement with many moving parts, I want to drill down on part important part of this deal -- security spending -- to explain what will be and could be cut.

To start, it’s important to understand the Administration’s approach to security spending. As the President has made clear on numerous occasions, as Commander-in-Chief, he has no greater responsibility than protecting our national security, and he will never accept cuts that compromise our ability to defend our homeland or America’s interests around the world.  In the President’s view, security encompasses not only the Department of Defense, but also funding that is used to protect America at the Departments of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, State and other international programs, and parts of the Department of Energy. In fact, “security” is a category that has been used in all the Administration’s budgets because it is important when allocating resources to recognize the roles that civilian and military agencies play and to be able to assess and balance all the national security tools they provide through one lens.

Thousands of Ways to SAVE

Last Friday marked the end of the submission period for the President’s 2011 SAVE Award competition, and the final tallies are in.  

This year, federal workers submitted an incredible 19,559 ideas about how to make government more efficient and effective, besting last year’s submissions by more than 1,000.  We want to thank everyone who participated in this year’s contest – both for your ideas and your commitment to cutting waste across the federal government.

A New Step in Accountability and Fighting Fraud

For too long the federal government allowed billions of taxpayer dollars to be wasted on things that are inefficient, unnecessary, or just plain dumb.  That’s why from day one, President Obama has been steadfast in his commitment to creating a government that is fully accountable to the citizens that it serves.  Through efforts such as the Campaign to Cut Waste, OMB and the federal agencies are changing the way Washington does business and aggressively hunting down and eliminating misspent tax dollars across the federal government.

Today marks another important step in this pursuit, as we are announcing the launch of the new Government Accountability and Transparency Board (GATB). The President has named a group of the federal government’s top waste, fraud, and abuse watchdogs and other agency leaders to this Board. Starting with the first meeting this morning, these leaders are developing plans to enhance transparency in federal spending and root out and stop waste, fraud, and abuse in federal programs.  
 
This new Board, established in last month’s Executive Order on “Delivering an Efficient, Effective and Accountable Government,” will draw on the lessons learned from our work to track stimulus spending under the Recovery Act.  The GATB will provide the strategic direction necessary to make the President’s vision for transparency and accountability in all Federal spending a reality.
 
Under the tireless leadership of the Vice President, the Administration took this vision for transparency and accountability and applied it to the Recovery Act.  We got stimulus money out the door quickly yet responsibly.  We made sure that Recovery Act recipients reported back to the American people on how projects were progressing, and put this information up for all to see and scrutinize on Recovery.gov.  And we worked with the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board  to keep fraud and waste at historically low levels and make sure that funds went to the right people and for right purposes.  In doing so, we learned a number of indispensable lessons about how government should conduct its business in the 21st century.
 
Our challenge now is to put these lessons to use across the federal government, and that is where the GATB comes in.  The Board will recommend a broad range of strategies to make spending data more reliable and accessible to the American people.  They will also make recommendations to broaden the Administration’s use of cutting edge technology to crack down on fraud, and focus on integrating data systems and using data for better decision-making.  In doing so, the Board will offer a comprehensive vision for the management of federal spending that will fundamentally change how government works.  And it will ensure that this vision is executed in the most cost-effective, efficient and logical manner.
 
To make sure we get it right from day one, the President has tapped Earl Devaney, a driving force behind the success of the Recovery Act through his leadership at the Recovery Board, to be the interim chair of this new effort.  Today, Chairman Devaney and the members of the GATB sat down and began strategizing how to reform the way we collect, display and analyze government spending data.  This Administration has already made tremendous strides in making government more open and cracking down on wasteful or fraudulent spending, and now we’re kicking it into high gear.
 
The President has designated the following individuals to serve on the GATB:
•           Earl E. Devaney – Chairman, Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board

•           Ashton B. Carter – Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics, Department of Defense

•           W. Scott Gould – Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Department of Veterans Affairs

•           Allison C. Lerner – Inspector General, National Science Foundation

•           Daniel R. Levinson – Inspector General, Department of Health and Human Services

•           Ellen Murray – Assistant Secretary for Financial Resources and Chief Financial Officer, Department of Health and Human Services

•           Calvin L. Scovel III – Inspector General, Department of Transportation

•           Kathleen S. Tighe – Inspector General, Department of Education

•           Daniel I. Werfel – Controller, Office of Management and Budget

•           David C. Williams – Inspector General, United States Postal Service

•           Neal S. Wolin – Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Department of the Treasury

Jeff Zients is the Deputy Director for Management and Chief Performance Officer.

Baseline Basics

The CBO just released its analysis of the debt ceiling extension and deficit reduction plan that the House of Representatives is considering. We have been clear in our opposition to this bill, and the President explained why last night.

While we disagree with the approach that Speaker Boehner chose to take in this bill, there is one thing that we all still agree on, and that is the size of the problem. Both the House Republican budget proposal unveiled by Congressman Ryan on April 5 and the President’s fiscal framework that he introduced on April 13, set as our goal deficit reduction of $4 trillion. Since both of these plans were introduced before the agreement on appropriations for FY 2011, the baseline used for them did not reflect the spending cuts enacted this year in that legislation. Indeed, throughout our weeks of talks, all parties have worked off a January baseline because we all recognized that we needed to start from the same place.

Cutting Waste in Contracting

Over the last two years, this Administration has focused on reducing waste in government spending in an effort to ensure that every tax dollar is spent wisely. One critical area of focus has been on contracting. During the last Administration, spending on contracting doubled—too often resulting in waste, fraud, and abuse.  The Obama Administration is committed to cracking down on this waste and strengthening accountability by both reducing and improving the use of contracts. As a result of an aggressive effort led by President Obama, contracting decreased for the first time in 13 years last year. In fact, agencies spent nearly $80 billion less than they would have spent had contract spending continued to grow at the same rate it had under the prior Administration.

We are continuing our efforts to strengthen accountability in contracting as part of the Campaign to Cut Waste, the Administration’s effort to root out misspent tax dollars. During the recent White House Forum on Accountability in Federal Contracting, OMB announced a goal of reducing spending on management support service contracts by 15 percent by the end of FY 2012 – a reduction of $6 billion.

Where the services are really needed and cuts might harm program or project performance, agencies must find ways to buy smarter, such as by negotiating lower rates or converting to fixed-price arrangements.

Why the focus on management support services─ which include activities as varied as engineering and technical services, acquisition planning, information technology systems development, and program management? 

First, these services are frequently cited as creating a potential risk of overreliance on contractors for critical activities related to agencies’ missions and operations.  That overreliance has long been a concern, and the President called for addressing it and rebalancing our relationship with contractors as early as his March 4, 2009 Memorandum on Government Contracting.