E-Government Program Management Office:
Deploying expert support – where and when it’s needed

The Challenge

The electronic transformation of the federal government is well under way, streamlining operations and making services instantly available to citizens over the Internet. To jump start the launch of this transformation, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) launched 24 “Quicksilver” E-Government initiatives. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) manages five of them: E-Authentication, E-Travel, Federal Asset Sales, Integrated Acquisition Environment and USA Services.

Managing these initiatives has been a complex challenge, encompassing large numbers of stakeholders from GSA, OMB, multi-agency governance councils and vendors. Because each initiative involves many federal agencies, success depended on effective cross-agency collaboration.
Meeting these requirements exceeded the existing program management capabilities of GSA. It simply didn’t have enough staff with the program management expertise to handle the scope and scale of the project. They were literally starting from scratch. SiloSmashers provided the support that put them on the path to Peak Performance®

Proven Experience Propels E-Government

SiloSmashers supplied a full team of experienced program management professionals to support the E-Government PMO. We served all five of the initiatives, especially the E-Authentication, E-Travel and Integrated Acquisition Environment initiatives – in which our people held significant leadership roles.

At the beginning of the engagement, we helped develop strategic and tactical plans for the E-Government PMO and each of the initiatives. This included applying portfolio management to match IT investment choices with the E-Government vision. The resulting plans provided blueprints for guiding both long-term and day-to-day decisions.

As the program kicked into high gear, our staff was involved far and wide – providing contract advice and assistance … enterprise architecture … processes and tools … internal and external communications … metrics and in-depth reporting … business process engineering … governance support … financial, budget and accounting administration … requirements management … security services … procurement services… quality management … and more.

Our experts played a central role in major IT decisions by providing analysis and recommenda-tions. Supplying Capital Planning and Investment Control (CPIC) support, we helped our client set strategy-driven priorities among potential IT capital investments. We also helped develop the OMB Exhibit 300 business cases needed to justify requests for major IT investments. Because E-Government systems must protect a wide spectrum of sensitive information, security was critical. SiloSmashers provided security analysts to oversee and support the security management activities of the five initiatives. We helped evaluate security needs and manage certification and authen-tication.

Our analysts also assisted the E-Government PMO in meeting regular reporting requirements, including OMB 300, privacy impact assessments and Federal Information Security Management Act compliance reports. Finally, SiloSmashers made cross-agency collaboration one of the program’s highest priorities. Applying our extensive facilitation and communication capabilities, we brought together stakeholders from across the country in meeting environments that optimized collaboration to produce tangible results. We established a collab-orative web environment that housed an array of documents that kept participants informed and engaged in the success of the initiatives.

The Results of Peak Performance®

SiloSmashers played a central role in assuring the successful launch of GSA’s E-Government PMO and its five Quicksilver initiatives. Our support helped develop consistent management processes and practices that were implemented across all five initiatives. What’s more, we were instrumental in creating what became a model program for cross-agency collaboration and for joint PMOs responsible for managing multiple programs. Supplemented with SiloSmashers program managers, the E-Government PMO success-fully jumpstarted the five initiatives, while establishing a framework for GSA to take over operations. Today, each initiative has transi-tioned to its permanent home within GSA.