Although the FY09 budget is still making its way through the various appropriations committees, some lawmakers are pushing for the creation of a new appropriations subcommittee focused on intelligence spending.

On September 11, in a speech on the Senate floor to observe the 7th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) introduced a Senate Resolution to create an Intelligence Appropriations Subcommittee. His motivation is to follow what he calls one of the most important recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which was to increase oversight of spending within the intelligence community. In a news release on his website, Senator Bond stresses the need for more insight into how taxpayer dollars are being spent within the intel community.

Much of the spending within intelligence agencies is classified, which makes it extremely difficult for contractors to find an entrypoint for offering technology solutions. Would increased oversight in the form of a dedicated subcommittee mean more information about IT spending? While this new subcommittee probably wouldn't offer the level of insight into spending that we see for other agencies - many of the missions are still classified after all - but it could bring more information about technology priorities and needs to light, as well as reveal the effectiveness and management of technology investments.

With the heightened concerns about national security as well as government spending, this resolution may have a fair shot at coming to fruition.

More details about the proposed resolution:

Alaska's Checkbook Online website provides insight into how the state spends its money. Companies that want to do business with the state should use this valuable new resource to better understand which departments spend the most money as well as which of their competitors are successfully doing business with the state.

During her state of the state speech in January, Sarah Palin talked about the launch of Alaska's Checkbook Online, "We redesigned technology for government efficiency and transparency, including our nearly-complete online checkbook, showing Alaskans where their money is spent." So how did the state spend its technology dollars and how much did it spend?

In the fiscal year that ended on June 30, the Land of the Midnight Sun spent $69.8 million on technology and telecommunications in the following areas, though information technology and IT consulting comprised over 41% of the total spending:

702 companies received a portion of the $69.8 million spent on technology in fiscal year 2008. The top 10 technology vendors received just over 56% of the total:

Note: ASAP Software was purchased by Dell in 2007; and Alascom, Inc., is owned by AT&T but is required to operate independently of its parent company in Alaska.

The Department of Administration was responsible for 39% of the spending, which is not surprising since Enterprise Technology Services (ETS) is a division within that department and is responsible for providing centralized enterprise technology services to state agencies. ETS is working on several major projects:

• Enterprise Active Directory Project (Opp ID 45469) -- Will contain executive branch assets for authentication and security
• Telephone Replacement Project -- World Wide Technology is the lead systems integrator for VoIP systems and is deploying a converged technology infrastructure
• Alaska Land Mobile Radio Project (ALMR) (Opp ID 12549) -- Transitioning to the operations and maintenance phase, while continuing to plan expansion

For more information about other states' transparency initiatives and the type of market intelligence that companies can glean from these initiatives, download INPUT's recent report entitled, State "Transparency" Websites Provide Immediate Insights and Long-Term Opportunities for Vendors.

While the nature of Gov. Sarah Palin's (R-AK) "executive" experience will be the subject of much debate during the closing months of the Presidential campaign, there is no doubt that she is the only person on a ticket who has signed budgets wtih state and local IT line items. As would be expected, she has employed IT pragmatically in service of her larger policy agenda.

As the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Gov. Palin oversaw a biennial budget around $13 million per year with less than $3 million of that total going to generalized operations expenses. So, on a yearly basis, IT spending in Wasilla, even including public safety expenditures, was only the range of a few hundred thousand dollars (i.e., 2-3%). As governor, Ms. Palin's budgetary responsibility jumped to approximately $8 billion. (See INPUT's state profile for more information.) At this level of spending, the themes that drive a policy agenda can make themselves known even the distant recesses of IT spending.

So where does Gov. Palin stand on some key issues that drove her gubernatorial agenda and could be part of a McCain administration?

(Remember, the last two vice presidents have been key domestic--as well as foreign--policy players in their respective administrations, so it would be no surprise if Gov. Palin's background were to come to the fore in this context.)

On health care she believes more competition in the industry will reduce costs -- an opinion which largely leaves government out of the solution and is in line with McCain's views. She has been an opponent of the certificate of need, a process that gives government the power to determine whether a medical service is necessary. In 2007 she created the Alaska Health Strategies Council to recommend ways to promote access to health care and help lower costs. The council eventually recommended retaining the certificate of need. Palin rejected their recommendation, but has yet to be successful eliminating it as the legislation to do so died. This year during her state of the state speech she proposed three other health related initiatives:

• Review what other fiscally conservative states have done to incentivize employers to provide medical insurance for employees based on the free market
• Pass the health care transparency act, requiring consumers get better information about the prices and quality of their care
• Include in comprehensive health reform personal responsibility so that Alaskans will live healthier lifestyles

On Education she proposed investing more than $1 billion each year under the "Three-Year Education Plan," which would let school districts plan ahead for their needs. And she proposed including $100 million in the capital budget for school construction and deferred maintenance. Palin also wanted to look at successful education programs across the country that can be replicated in Alaska to improve the state's high school graduation rate, which is 61%. She also believes the state is unique, especially its rural areas, and Alaska's Congressional delegation needs to work with the Department of Education to adapt No Child Left Behind standards.

On workforce readiness issues, Palin has taken the approach of many other governors across the nation, calling for the private sector, the state's Department of Labor, post-secondary institutions to work together to ensure students have the skills to meet workforce needs. She also proposed establishing a subcabinet agency be created with the objective of lowering unemployment in areas of the state where it is high.

In terms of technology initiatives, Palin's proposed state budget for fiscal year 2009, included almost $50 million (above and beyond baseline IT spending) -- much of it directed towards health care, education and workforce readiness:

• Student Information System for vocational-technical students
• Replace the Business Services' management information system which monitors Workforce Investment Act job training programs (Opp ID 47597)
• Upgrade the Alaska Labor Exchange System (ALEXsys) (Opp ID 12537)
• Replace the Department of Health and Social Services' Fraud Case Management System (FCM)
• Replace the Electronic Vital Record Registration System (Opp ID 45121)
• Replace eligibility systems used for social services and Medicaid (Opp ID 43879 and Opp ID 43881)

While this election cycle may seem like one of the longest ever, there's still plenty of time for us to get to know more about Sarah Palin and her views on many issues. Her next big test will be the vice presidential debate, where I'm sure we'll learn more about her positions on issues we didn't hear about in her acceptance speech.

Conflict of Interest (COI) has gotten a good deal of attention over the years, especially as the federal government continues to increase its reliance on contractors. While most contractors understand the importance of COI, the cost of failing to diligently examine all potential COI concerns - whether intentional or nonintentional - can be high, as SAIC's position shows.

According to a Federal Times article, a federal jury found SAIC guilty of violating the False Claims Act by failing to disclose potential conflicts of interest that could have biased its work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The company helped the agency develop radioactive waste recycling rules. Although actual bias wasn't proven, the jury determined that the potential for bias was there because the company has relationships with companies that could benefit from the rule, a fact that NRC says SAIC failed to disclose.

The cost for SAIC's misstep: $6 million in damages, plus $5,000 to $10,000 in fines for each claim (totaling 77), for an additional fine of between $385,000 to $770,000.

With the eagle eye of Congress on acquisitions, due diligence has never been more critical. The cost of these types of rulings can go well beyond financial; companies could also be suspended or disbarred from doing business with the government.

Many government observers are talking about how much of the President's Management Agenda (PMA) will continue into the next administration. OMB is using the limited time it has before the next administration to position the PMA in hopes that the next administration will continue in the same direction.

As part of the focus on performance, OMB's High Risk List tracks IT projects that are deemed high risk either because of cost, government-wide impact, or complexity. OMB's third quarter list showed a drop in number (from 489 to 472), but a GAO report recently criticized OMB for misrepresenting progress. OMB reports thatt only 87 out of 472 IT projects on the list have significant budget or scheduling overruns. But GAO's report reveals the fact that agencies have been adjusting their cost and schedule baselines. In fact, the report states that 48% of the federal government's major IT projects have been rebaselined for reasons such as changes in project goals and funding. Of those, 51% were rebaselined twice, and roughly 11% were rebaselined at least 4 times. Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) makes a good point - everyone can stay on time and on budget if you keep changing the baseline.

Senator Carper (D-DE), along with Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), have sponsored legislation requiring more agency reporting to OMB and Congress about cost, schedule, and performance issues. Carper wants a list of all projects that are experiencing shortfalls, but OMB IT Adminstrator Karen Evans is hesitant to provide the list because she doesn't want to "embarass agencies" into focusing more on compliance than results. The standard response to that perspective has been clear: if public scrutiny is not an option, then perhaps withheld funding should be.

If this legislation flies, agencies will be forced to put more focus on requirements identification, program management, and contractor performance. However, many would agree that this needs to happen anyway.

The bottom line is that the effectiveness and accuracy of the High Risk List has been called into question again, which doesn't exactly highlight the positive intent of the effort for the next administration.

In their latest publications, Ohio and Arizona institutes commend the use of current technologies in advancing government fiscal transparency and even more outstanding is the recognition that today's transparency efforts will surely be outdated by emerging advanced systems.

This week the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute and the Ohio-based Buckeye Institute unveiled white papers calling for all government entities to better use current and up-coming technologies to digitize government spending data and convert that data into significant information that is readily available online and in easy structured formats.

The Goldwater report highlights a number of areas where governments need greater transparency such as contracts and contract performance evaluations as well as government spending and performance data. Among its many recommendations to implement transparency, the report recommends governments to maintain a central repository for transparency data rather than allowing each agency to post its own data in whatever format they desire, which will only add to the inconsistency of available data.

Although the Goldwater report praises the passage of recent legislation strengthening contracts transparency in Arizona, it also affirms that more transparency is needed especially in areas where government performance can be effectively evaluated. Therefore, the report recommends the leverage of technology solutions to achieve greater transparency in government performance by posting agency performance and strategic planning data online for more effective management of state-funded programs. Lastly, the report points out that although there are initial start-up costs and ongoing costs involved in the creation of these systems, the return on these investments will ultimately exceed expectations gained from increased transparency.

The Buckeye report primarily explores fiscal transparency initiatives in other states. Nonetheless, the report offers a provocative argument about the evolution of government transparency efforts beginning with the early adoption of desktop computers to the more sophisticated internet systems currently available leading to the adoption of coming Web 2.0 systems. According to the report, as more superior technology solutions become available, governments should be prepared to respond to greater demands for making their operations more transparent to its citizens.

An in-depth analysis of how State Transparency Websites Provide Immediate Insights and Long-Term Opportunities for Vendors can be found at INPUT's State and Local Industry Insight.

The 1st edition of NYS CIO/OFT inTOUCH newsletter unveiled the agency's planned efforts in measuring the progress and performance of its services through the use of performance dashboards, which will provide visibility into the agency's strategic goals, performance metrics and targets.

CIO/OFT official newsletter, InTOUCH, introduced major IT initiatives taking place at CIO/OFT. Among these accomplishments, the agency disclosed its efforts to measure and determine how effectively and efficiently the agency delivers its services.

According to the newsletter, in order for CIO/OFT to perform better, be more cost-effective and more transparent, it must focus on two major areas: "reduce total cost of IT ownership and continually measure performance to deliver better customer service". Therefore, CIO/OFT has implemented performance dashboards as a way to provide a quick status of the agency's progress on each of its seven strategic goals as detailed further in the Plan 2010 CIO/OFT Strategic Roadmap.

The performance measures will use a color-coded scheme to indicate the status of each metric and target: Red - Target WAS NOT achieve, Green - Target WAS achieved and Yellow - Target shows POSITIVE progress. The dashboards will also provide performance trend indicators showing the direction of change in comparison to a previous report. In efforts to attain management accountability, the scorecard will also provide an assigned program owner to a performance indicator such as a Deputy CIO or Director. Lastly, the dashboard will include performance targets and charts which will determine gaps in performance by measuring "Actual" performance compared to "Target" performance.

The CIO/OFT prepares a performance dashboard on a monthly basis and it is available on its intranet. However, CIO/OFT plans to publicly post quarterly strategic performance dashboards on its website. In addition, inTOUCH newsletters will report any updates on this and many other CIO/OFT strategic and operational efforts.

Another notable adopter of improved technology management tools has been the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA). VITA uses an IT Investment Management (ITIM) process for pre-selecting, selecting, controlling and evaluating IT investments. Most recently VITA launched its new IT management portfolio application, ProSight. The system features dashboards, scorecards and repositories offering agencies a superior management of IT investments.

It is expected that more states will continue to adopt these types of performance measures as best practices for greater accountability and transparency in their states. These efforts will assist agencies statewide evolve from measuring performance to managing performance and ultimately achieve strategic goals.

If Senators Thomas Carper (D-DE), Susan Collins (R-ME), Clair McCaskill, (D-MO), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) have their way, contractors and agencies will face even more oversight on IT projects. On July 31, they introduced the Information Technology Investment Oversight Enhancement and Waste Prevention Act of 2008. The goal of the act is to force agency decision makers to be more conscientious about requirements, cost, and schedule planning. If they don't, this legislation would require OMB to either help the agency find other ways to meet the need or determine if the agency should scrap the project. Most importantly, it could disrupt project funding if performance and problem mitigation aren't up to par.

Details of the proposed legislation:

(Note: "IT investment projects" are those that are mission critical, have significant program or policy implications, have high visibility, have high DME costs, are funded through direct appropriations, and are defined as "major" by the agency's capital planning and investment control process.)

If the agency head doesn't meet reporting deadlines (45 days to report and 180 to complete the action plan), the agency may not receive additional funds for the project until these requirements are met.

Another interesting part of this proposed legislation is that it directs the OMB E-Gov Administrator to establish an "IT Strike Force" consisting of individuals in government and industry with IT program management expertise.

The implications of this legislation are significant. Not only does it put yet another layer of oversight on an already laborious process, it adds an additional dimension to program planning and holds program managers more accountable for project problems and failures.

Don't be surprised if some of the pressure - in the form of stricter performance measures, risk aversion, and price sensitivity - trickles down to contractors.

South Carolina citizens can now track how public money is spent on their Medicaid program. Spending patterns or any unusual billings will soon manifest which could potentially change spending behaviors, which in turn may drive down costs.

Gov. Sanford's spending transparency effort is leading by example for state agencies to engage in open approaches to spending habits. The Department of Health and Human Services is making the state's fiscal transparency even stronger by posting Medicaid reimbursement information online. The tool allows visibility into total Medicaid payments to providers and the number of beneficiaries served. The current FY07 reports are based on payments made from July 2006 through June 2007.

Last year the Governor issued a Spending Transparency Executive Order in efforts to improve government transparency to promote fiscal responsibility and government accountability. The state's Spending Transparency Web site was completed earlier this year.

On Wednesday, July 23rd, the Department of the Navy moved forward with two high profile RFPs for Program Management Support Services for the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) and the Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN) via the SeaPort-e MAC. One of these contracts INPUT Opportunity Report #49336 (Solicitation #N00024-08-R-3337) is being competed on an "unrestricted" basis, with proposals due by August 26, 2008. The other contract, INPUT Opportunity Report #49343, (Solicitation #N00024-08-R-3339) is being competed as a Small Business Set-Aside with proposals due by August 22, 2008.

The Navy's strategy for competing and awarding the contract for NGEN has been evolving over the last year. DON CIO, Robert Carey, made clear in 2007 that the contract for NGEN will be put into place before the NMCI contract expires in September 2010 in order to provide for as seamless a transition as possible. However, to this Analyst's knowledge, Carey has never mentioned that separate procurements for program management services would be carried out as part of the strategy for putting NGEN in place. The competition of separate contracts for NMCI-NGEN Program Management also was not mentioned in the Naval Networking Enviroment~2016 Strategy Paper that the DON CIO released in May 2008. NMCI and NGEN are pillars of the CIO's NNE strategy.

The appearance of these RFPs is of great value to SeaPort-e vendors who want to compete for NGEN when the Solicitation appears in early FY 2009. My reading of the requirements documents reveals there is no Organizational Conflict of Interest clause in either of the program management solicitations as far as later competing for NGEN is concerned. This makes me wonder if the companies that win these contracts will have an advantage when competing for NGEN. The real concern is that if any advantage exists it would be derived from winning a task order contract that was not publicly competed by the Navy. The entire process strikes me as ethically gray from the standpoint of fairness in Government contracting and contrary to the oft-expressed Congressional demand for greater competition in contracting.

Then again, hiding acquisitions behind the battleship gray of a Multiple Award Contract (MAC) is nothing new for the Navy or the Department of Defense. The contracting environment created by SeaPort-e is effectively an alternate universe. Solicitations in this universe walk a foggy street that hides them from public scrutiny. In this universe, there no protests (until recently for the larger tasks) and industry has no advance warning of the appearance of Solicitations. Sometimes even incumbent contract holders and Contracting Offices utilizing SeaPort-e don't know when their requirements will be solicited. Follow-on contracts tend to disappear behind the SeaPort-e veil and disappear entirely or they re-emerge as new task orders with the name of the requirement altered beyond easy recognition.

Meaning, even SeaPort-e contract holders have difficulty gaining visibility into the limited competition environment of SeaPort-e requirements, but at least they have the opportunity to compete for task orders. Those without a SeaPort-e contract, however, are unable to compete for the increasing number of contracts coming out behind the veil of fog that shrouds the SeaPort-e MAC.