Urgent Call to Action by OMB DDM Ueland: 'Now is the Moment for Implementation'
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is preparing a new President's Management Agenda, with a focus on enhancing transparency, accountability, and cost efficiency in federal government operations.
Eric Ueland, the deputy director for management at the OMB, outlined the key elements of the new agenda. It includes creating a centralized technological system for tracking federal spending on contracts, grants, and loans. The aim is to improve government efficiency and resource management, while exempting critical areas such as law enforcement, immigration enforcement, and the military.
Other measures include reviewing existing contracts and grants to improve efficiency, freezing non-essential travel and credit card use temporarily, updating real property inventories, and considering the termination of unnecessary leases.
The agenda emphasizes government efficiency and cost containment to better manage taxpayer resources and ensure that federal agencies operate more effectively and transparently. It is part of broader efforts in the administration to reform procurement, space management, and technology modernization to restore common sense and rational management practices in federal agencies.
One of the key areas of focus is the federal human resources systems. Ueland mentioned consolidating and modernizing these systems as a key piece of the reform and reorganization effort. Agencies spend at least $2 billion a year to maintain legacy and fragmented human resources systems.
The OMB is also working to reduce the number of federal websites. They have identified and are working on reducing the number of federal websites by 1,000, aiming to bring the overall count down to 6,000.
In addition, the OMB is focusing on improving the effectiveness of agency Chief Information Officers (CIOs). Many of them lack a common view of their "value proposition" and coordination with each other. The aim is to break down barriers, ensure integration, and drive for outcomes to add value to agencies and departments, ultimately benefiting taxpayers.
The Trump administration is not waiting for Congress to fund building upgrades; instead, they are selling buildings and placing for-sale signs on them immediately. Since January, 43 buildings have been sold, generating $200 million in proceeds and unloading $200 million in deferred liabilities.
The administration has also eliminated hundreds of thousands of nonessential positions across all agencies and departments. The deferred maintenance cost across the government portfolio has increased from $5 billion to $20 billion over the past decade.
Agencies are reducing the size of their workforces and consolidating or eliminating agencies or offices as part of the reorganization and reform of the government. The OMB is working to ensure that when a department turns to a CIO, the CIO is able to deliver, and a secretary or director knows that with confidence, the goals can be achieved.
The new President's Management Agenda, under President Trump and Director Vought, aims to ensure that the federal government spends less time ensuring better results from information technology and more time delivering value to taxpayers. The 'M' in OMB now stands for action.
The new President's Management Agenda is planning to reimagine the federal workforce by consolidating and modernizing human resources systems, potentially leading to cost savings for the government. The reimagined workforce will aim to deliver more value to taxpayers and align with the federal government's focus on resource management and cost containment.
As part of the business strategy to boost efficiency, the agenda also includes revamping the finance sector, such as creating a centralized technological system for tracking federal spending on contracts, grants, and loans, and reviewing existing contracts to improve their efficiency.
