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Making Government Work Closing the Gap
Remarks by Vivek Kundra, Federal Chief Information Officer at Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA on March 4, 2010
For too long, those in Washington have relied on the same group of people for the same, outdated ways of problem solving.
Good afternoon. It’s great to be here in the other Washington.
The Obama Administration is changing the way business is done in Washington bringing a new sense of responsibility for taxpayer dollars. For too long, those in Washington have relied on the same group of people for the same, outdated ways of problem solving, creating a government that is full of waste and unresponsive to Americans’ needs.
Today, I’d like to talk about how the Obama Administration is leveraging the power of technology to deliver for the American people.
Today, I’d like to talk about how the Obama Administration is leveraging the power of technology to deliver for the American people.
As many of you know, the President of the United States had to fight tooth and nail just to get a Blackberry. Imagine what it must be like for the rest of the Federal workforce.
On my first day on the job, I learned that you get a Blackberry based on the number of years you served in the government. Such perverse incentives have led to the technology gap between the public and private sectors.
The Technology Gap
I wish this were the only example, yet too often we hear stories about how the Federal Government, for one reason or another, lacks technological capabilities that are commonplace everywhere else. This technology gap has profoundly impacted our ability to deliver for the American people.
For example, the Department of Veterans Affairs is dependent on paper files to make final benefit decisions on behalf of Veterans, which means it can take veterans upto 162 days to receive benefits.
At the Patent and Trademark Office, more than 80 percent of patent applications are received electronically. However, these applications are printed out, scanned, and then processed. This is one of the reasons why it takes an average of three years for an application to be processed.
All across the Federal Government, HR personnel spend weeks working on systems that don’t talk to each other and prepare paper records for simple things like transfers contributing to a process that can take months for employees to move within the government.
The Productivity Gap
Technological innovation in the private sector has fueled a productivity boom over the past twenty years. However, according to a McKinsey study, the Federal Government has largely missed this transformation.
Think about our everyday lives. You can launch your own web-site in seconds. A small business owner can manage payroll online. A grandmother can share pictures of her grandchildren with family across the world.
But why does it take years and cost millions of dollars to deploy technology across the Federal Government?
The Cause of the Gap
It’s not due to a lack of investment. In fact, the United States government is the number one purchaser of IT goods and services in the world. Last year alone we spent $76 billion on IT, and more than half a trillion dollars over the past decade. But veterans still wait months to receive their benefits, inventors have to wait years for a patent to be approved, and federal employees waste months navigating a complicated paper-based bureaucracy to move from one agency to another.
This is not acceptable. It is vital to understand the five main factors contributing to this gap.
First, the government has shied away from making the tough management decisions to terminate, halt, or turnaround failing projects. In 2008, 346 IT investments representing $15 billion were identified as poorly planned or managed; in 2009, that grew to 585 investments totaling more than $27 billion.
Second, the government has operated for far too long as a loosely coupled federation of hundreds of agencies. This has led to a fragmented infrastructure, such as over 1,100 data centers and more than 24,000 websites. As a result, the American people have to work to access government services, rather than the government working to serve them.
Third, the government tends to operate in a closed, secretive, and opaque manner with the belief that it has a monopoly on the best ideas. We haven’t reached outside the four walls of Washington as often as we should.
Fourth, there is an emphasis on compliance rather than results—checking the box, rather than checking to see what is working. For example, when it comes to IT security, over the last six years the Department of State spent $133 million amassing a total of 50 shelf feet, or 95 thousand pages, of security documentation for about 150 major IT systems. This works out to roughly $1,400 per page on paper “snapshots” that are often outdated a few days after being published.
And finally, the government has had a self-image that it must be a laggard when it comes to technology and therefore has not spent an appropriate amount of energy on finding the innovative path.
Closing the Technology Gap
These persistent problems won’t be solved overnight, but we are well positioned to address them. We have a President who has made technology a top priority since Day one. The Administration is committed to changing the way Washington works by leveraging the power of technology. The President appointed the nation’s first federal Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer to focus on these issues. He has charged me with ensuring that we are using the spirit of American innovation and the power of technology to improve performance and lower the cost of government.
The President recognizes that the best ideas are not always within the four walls of Washington. That is why he convened more than 50 of the top CEOs from the private sector for a Forum on Modernizing Government on January 14. We brought some of the brightest minds in business to the White House: chief executives such as Glenn Tilton from United Airlines, John Riccitiello from Electronic Arts, Steve Ballmer from Microsoft, and Dan Fulton from Weyerhaeuser. They shared with us their ideas for the government to leverage technology in order to improve performance and save money.
While the Forum focused on technology, we consistently heard from participants that technology alone is not the solution. These discussions reinforced for us the true drivers of success: execution-focused leadership, relentless review of projects, and strong alignment with customer and business needs. A disciplined management framework allows technology to be deployed effectively and enables dramatic productivity improvements. Without management and oversight, technology investments are too often wasteful and distracting.
We’ve also looked to state and local governments—the laboratories of democracy— for innovative solutions. Yesterday, I was in San Francisco with Mayor Newsom when he launched the Open 311API which allows civic minded developers like EveryBlock to create useful applications that connect residents to city services. San Francisco is raising the bar and has partnered with Boston, Los Angeles, District of Columbia and Chicago to establish a national movement to simplify access to city services. In order to close the technology gap in the Federal Government and to deliver for the American people, we are focused on four key areas:
1) Cut Waste
2) Improve Performance and Deliver Better Service
3) Enable an Open, Transparent and Participatory Government
4) Secure our Computing Environment
1. Cut Waste
First, we must terminate, turnaround or halt IT Investments that don’t deliver.
In our personal lives, we can instantly access our investment portfolio to get real-time share prices, breaking news, and up-to-date corporate financials. Yet historically, the public’s best source on the performance of the more than $70 billion in annual government technology investment was a static PDF issued quarterly. The lack of real-time insight hindered any substantive attempt to improve performance, and projects died only after they had become newspaper headlines.
That is why in June of 2009, we launched the IT Dashboard, which allows the American people to monitor IT investments across the Federal Government. The IT Dashboard, which has received over 86 million hits, shines light into the operations of the Federal Government. If a project is over budget or behind schedule, you can see by how much money and time, and you can see the person responsible, not just contact information but also their picture.
However, it is not enough to simply shine a light on IT programs and hope that improved results will follow. We must also take action.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides an example of how the Administration is driving change. In July 2009, VA halted 45 IT projects which were behind schedule or over budget, identified in part thanks to the IT Dashboard. During the next six months, after making significant changes in how the projects were managed, VA restarted 32 of these projects, stopped 12, and continued reviewing one. In doing so, the VA avoided $54 million in wasteful spending during fiscal year 2010.
In January of 2010 we launched TechStat Accountability Sessions. A TechStat session is where we sit down face-to-face with agency leadership and conduct an evidence-based review of an IT investment. These reviews are powered by the IT Dashboard and public input. We are using the Dashboard and TechStats to turnaround, halt or terminate IT investments that do not produce dividends for the American people.
2. Improve Performance and Deliver Better Service
The second area we’re focusing on to close the technology gap is improving performance and delivering better service.
The private sector has leveraged two decades worth of technology advances to do two important things: improve the quality of service for its customers and reduce the cost of delivering those services. But on both fronts, the government has not kept pace.
In the private sector, IBM has reduced the data centers that support its employee base from 235 to 12 while also rationalizing the applications, networks and technologies in those data centers, generating savings of $4.1 billion over 5 years . Hewlett Packard consolidated 14 data centers into one, reducing energy usage by almost 40 percent .
However, the government has gone in the opposite direction. Since 1998, the number of federal data centers has grown from 432 to more than 1,100—a significant increase in cost and energy usage. That is why we have embarked on a data center consolidation strategy across the Federal Government. This initiative will help fulfill the Administration’s energy and environmental priorities, and will help the government more efficiently manage its resources.
We are also shifting investments to cloud computing in order to leverage more energy-efficient and cost-effective service delivery models. Although we’re just starting, we’ve already seen results. For example, we are reducing annual operating costs for USA.gov, the Federal Government’s citizen services portal, from $2.35 million to $650,000 by migrating to a cloud-based platform.
We also have to make it simpler for the Federal Government to purchase new and innovative technologies. The current process is so slow and cumbersome that, in some cases, by the time a technology is acquired it is already obsolete. That is why we rolled out Apps.gov, the one-stop source for government cloud computing solutions. This is an innovation that can not only change how the Government operates but also save taxpayers’ dollars in the process. Over the next three years new applications will be added to improve the Government’s ability to serve the public.
But we must never forget that our infrastructure is a means to an end. Our ultimate goal is to make government work for the American people. A number of agencies are already moving in this direction:
But we must never forget that our infrastructure is a means to an end. Our ultimate goal is to make government work for the American people. A number of agencies are already moving in this direction:
To reduce the benefits backlog for our Veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs is moving to a paperless claims adjudication and benefits delivery system.
To improve access to education, the Department of Education is modernizing and streamlining its application process and eligibility determination system (AID), building on the success of efforts to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) process.
To demystify the citizenship process, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) is moving from a paper-based filing system to an electronic process. You can now enter your receipt number, just like you would a FedEx package tracking number, to check the status of your immigration case, from the time USCIS accepts it to the actual ceremonial oath.
To reduce the time it takes taxpayers to receive refunds and improve customer service, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is modernizing its operations.
Meanwhile, the public’s expectation of service delivery has radically changed. The mobile revolution has changed our daily lives. We expect to be able to connect to anyone, anywhere, at any time. We want government services to be just as easy: anywhere, any time. Three years ago there were zero applications for smartphones; now there are over 150,000 apps. Likewise, we are working on a mobile computing platform which would encourage the development of innovative applications using data available on Data.gov.
For instance, imagine being at a car dealership and being able to check your phone for safety and crash ratings based on tests conducted by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, before you buy a new car.
We want to simplify access to government services and deliver those services in a context aware model.
3. Enable an Open, Transparent and Participatory Government
The third area we’re focusing on to close the technology gap is enabling an open, transparent, and participatory government.
For too long, there has been a pervasive culture of secrecy in Washington, where information and discussions are being held behind closed doors. On his first day in Office, President Obama signed the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government to usher in a new era. The memo outlined three principles that form the cornerstone of an open government: transparency, participation, and collaboration.
The President’s memorandum was followed by the Open Government Directive issued by OMB in December 2009. The Directive lays the foundation to hardwire these key values government-wide.
In early February, every major agency launched an open government website to provide the latest news and updates, allowing the public to track its actions toward implementing an open government plan of action and to receive feedback from the public on those plans. Also in early February, the White House launched a public dashboard to provide an ongoing assessment of our progress towards the Directive’s goals.
We continue to build on this foundation with initiatives that will help open the government to the right answers wherever they may come from, seek constructive feedback, and tap into the ingenuity of the American people.
This is why we launched Data.gov last May. Data.gov is a platform to provide the public with access to thousands of high-value datasets that the government routinely collects. It allows the public to easily find, download, and use datasets and tools that are gener¬ated by the Federal Government.
The information available through Data.gov has a direct impact on the daily lives of Americans. When the Department of Agriculture makes nutrition information available, families can make smarter eating choices. When the Department of Education makes information available about colleges and universities, students can make better-informed choices about the quality and cost of education. And when the Department of Labor makes safety information available, employers can better protect workers.
Data.gov also allows enterprising individuals and organizations to build innovative applications to use government data in new ways. One example, which I just used the other day in getting out here, is FlyOnTime.us, which uses data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics to allow consumers to see estimated versus actual arrival times for flights on major commercial carriers.
And opening government to the best answers wherever they come from is why the Administration is issuing guidance to agency’s on challenges and prizes next week. Just as Netflix offered a $1 million prize for improvements to its recommendation algorithm, the President’s SAVE Award solicited ideas from Federal employees on how to make our government more efficient and effective. We have the power of challenges and prizes from Federal employees on the front lines to people all over the world.
And the government must also become more accountable. Today anyone can log onto Yelp and read reviews of a local restaurant, or see the performance rating of a seller on Ebay or Amazon. When these performance measurements are open to the public, the vendors have a strong incentive to continually improve.
This is why are working on a Citizen Services Dashboard, which will let the American people see how the government is delivering services to them. It will highlight top delivery areas and even allow the public to rate the quality of key government services.
These initiatives will help us open up the government and incorporate the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration.
4. Secure Our Computing Environment
The fourth area we’re focusing on to close the technology gap is securing the computing environment of the Federal Government.
As we increasingly rely on emerging technologies to deliver services to the American people, we cannot lose sight of the fact that we operate in an inter-connected environment, in which new threats arise daily.
This is why the President ordered the Cyberspace Policy Review, the 60-day bottom up-review of cyber activities, and appointed the Cyber Coordinator, my colleague Howard Schmidt.
This is why in September of 2009 we convened a taskforce, reaching out across the Federal community, as well as to the private sector, to develop security performance measures focused on outcomes rather than processes.
This is why in October of 2009 we launched CyberScope, an interactive tool to enable Federal cyber security personnel to fulfill their reporting requirements through a modern digital platform rather than by emailing hundreds of spreadsheets as was the protocol previously.
This is why we are baking security into the architecture of our systems, rather than bolting it on after the fact. Just like building a house with the security system designed in versus adding one later, this will lower costs while increasing security. We are also working with agencies to reduce unnecessary use of personally identifiable information. We are working to develop policies outlining rules of behavior, and identify consequences and corrective actions to address non-compliance. And we are implementing breach notification plans when information is compromised.
The Administration has also revised the classification guidance for the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), in order to provide the American people with the ability to partner with government and participate meaningfully in the discussion about how we can best use the resources and expertise of the intelligence community with proper oversight for the protection of privacy and civil liberties. CNCI began in 2008 and forms an important component of cybersecurity efforts within the federal government and now an unclassified description along with the 12 initiatives can be viewed or downloaded online.
Closing
By focusing on these four areas: cutting waste; improving performance and delivery of services; enabling an open and transparent government; and securing our computing environment, we can begin to close the technology gap, to deliver for the American people.
Looking back through history we can see the transformative power of technology: from the printing press, which enabled the spread of knowledge across generations, to refrigeration, which enabled fast, low cost distribution of food around the world, to mobile communications, which connect us whenever, wherever.
And we have seen in the last twenty years the rise of the internet, which has disrupted industries, changed forever how commerce is conducted globally, and unleashed countless simple innovations in the consumer space, like how we pay our bills and book hotel rooms. Activities that used to cost a fortune and take days can now be accomplished in matter of minutes at a fraction of the cost.
The Obama Administration is committed to making the Federal Government work better for the American people. Closing the technology gap between the private and public sectors is essential to delivering the best results possible. The Administration is focused on closing this gap by maximizing return on our investment and bringing the Federal Government into the 21st Century.
Thank you for your time.
