Congress Snips Away at E-Gov Development Funding

The new federal fiscal year started Oct. 1 with an old problem: an unsettled annual budget. Political wrangling over the proposed budget for 2012 -- estimated at nearly US$3.5 trillion by the Obama administration -- meant that stopgap funding bills were required just to keep the government running. Uncertainty over funding has become a way of life for federal agency managers. The management challenge has been compounded by congressionally mandated budget cuts.

At the Office of E-Government and Information Technology, for example, funding was cut from $34 million in 2010 to just $8 million in 2011. As lawmakers fiddled with the appropriations for 2012, it was unclear just what the budget for the E-Gov office will be in 2012 -- only that it will be far less than the 2010 level. The E-Gov office is a unit within the Office of Management and Budget.