Thursday, March 11, 2004

Arlington, Virginia

Mr. Lawrence: Good morning and welcome to The Business of Government Hour. I'm Paul Lawrence, partner in charge of The IBM Center for The Business of Government. We created the Center in 1998 to encourage discussion and research into new approaches to improving government effectiveness. You can find out more by visiting us on the web at businessofgovernment.org.

The Business of Government Hour features a conversation about management with a government executive who is changing the way government does business. Our special guest this morning is Norm Enger, E-government program director in the Office of Personnel Management.

Good morning, Norm.

Mr. Enger: Good morning.

Mr. Lawrence: And joining us in our conversation is Tom Romeo, also from IBM.

Good morning, Tom.

Mr. Romeo: Good morning.

Mr. Lawrence: Well, Norm, let’s start by sort of focusing on the mission and the activities of OPM. Could you describe for our listeners what OPM does?

Mr. Enger: The main job of OPM is to build a high-quality and diverse federal workforce based on merit system principles. To do this, OPM works with the President, the Congress, departments, and agencies to help them to develop and implement good human capital policies that in turn let the agencies meet their strategic objectives. OPM is essentially a consulting organization that guides the federal government, the civilian sector, to improve how it works with, manages, and guides development of human capital.

Mr. Lawrence: So you would characterize the relationship between OPM -- you use the word “guide.” What’s the relationship between OPM and, say, the rest of the federal government? How would you describe that?

Mr. Enger: Well, the OPM has the mandate, if you will, to give policy guidance to the civilian sector of the government, the human capital officers throughout the civilian sector, to properly manage their personnel and payroll systems, and all the systems that deal with the federal employee.

Mr. Romeo: Can you tell us a little bit about your role as the E-government program director for OPM?

Mr. Enger: My role is the E-gov program director, and the OPM received five of the 24 original E gov initiatives. The five E-gov initiatives, which we’ll talk about shortly, deal with human capital. The mandate of E-government is to transform government business systems. Therefore, in this context, the OPM initiatives seek to transform the human resource, the human capital systems, in the federal agencies. What is interesting in this context is that OPM, I believe, has been successful in this mission because we are the second agency to achieve green status, which is given by OMB to agencies that meet all of their criteria and milestones for E-government. So right now, we have just achieved green status in E-government.

Let me also add that E-government is a little bit unique in the sense that what we’re talking about is not minor Band-Aid changes to systems; we’re looking at transformational change, which means major, radical change to how the government does business. What’s also very relevant here is we’re talking about change in a very short space of time. E-gov has objectives to transform systems within 18 to 24 months. We wind up with a very, very ambitious schedule to accomplish these things.

I work very closely with the director of OPM, Kay Coles James, the OPM officials, and the agencies to, in effect, put into place and implement the vision of E-government. I also, of course, work closely with the CIO of OPM, because we have to work within the infrastructure developed by the OPM’s CIO.

Mr. Romeo: I know in other agencies, there are also E-government lead positions. Can you talk a little bit about some of those positions and the advantages of having such a role?

Mr. Enger: Well, there were, as I said before, 24 E-gov initiatives. Every agency that has an E gov initiative has assigned a project manager for the initiative. This is because of what I said earlier; namely, you’re looking a radical change in a very, very short space of time, 18 to 24 months. Therefore, to accomplish that, each of the 24 initiatives has a project manager, and each agency that is a managing partner, such as OPM, has assigned a manager for that purpose. These are really government-wide in scope, so just because an agency has an initiative, it means, in effect, the agency is responsible for working across the government to provide a government-wide solution. The perception here is not agency-centric, but government-wide. So as we’ll talk about in a few minutes here, what we have developed from OPM are used throughout the federal government, not just by OPM.

Mr. Romeo: Thanks, Norm. How many employees would you say work for the E government program at OPM, and what kind of skill sets do they have?

Mr. Enger: I have approximately 60 individuals working for me in the OPM E-gov program. These 60 individuals are a combination of full-time OPM personnel and contractors and detailees. The E-gov initiatives really require quite a spectrum of skills. We have IT specialists, human resource specialists, risk management specialists; a wide range, security specialists, privacy specialists. We really wind up with a mosaic and quite a spectrum of people required to effectively design, develop, and implement that E-gov initiative.

Mr. Romeo: Can you tell me a little bit about your career prior to joining OPM, and what type of skills do you think best prepared you for the E-gov program lead at OPM?

Mr. Enger: Well, my background has essentially been private sector. I ran my own computer system integration firm for many, many years, for over 20 years, providing basically systems and E-commerce solutions to federal and commercial clients. My firm was acquired about four or five years ago by Computer Associates, a very large system software and business software firm. And I therefore wound up running a smaller firm and then working as a vice president for a very large firm.

And then what happened is that approximately two years ago, I got a call from the chief of staff of OPM, asking me to come down and talk to them. I was quite unprepared for this. I went down, and essentially, the chief of staff and director asked me if I would be interested in public service. And I’d always had some interest in this, but never really focused upon where I would do public service. I met and talked to the chief of staff and the director, and was very impressed by their vision and their dedication to transforming federal systems, and I was asked to interview for the position. I interviewed, among other people, and I was selected to become the OPM E-gov program manager.

I must say that my prior many, many years in the business, and especially my private sector background with IT, information systems, for many, many years prepared me very, very well for the current position.

Mr. Lawrence: When you think about your days in the private sector, how would you compare the management styles used in the private sector versus the public sector?

Mr. Enger: Well, I was a bit surprised that in reality, the difference is not that dramatic. The senior executives in the federal sector are judged upon such qualifications as leading change, leading people, results-driven, business acumen, building coalitions. Well, these are very, very much the same criteria used to judge successful managers in the private sector. What has happened is that the government is more and more looking to the private sector for metrics and ways to improve its operations. I see more and more the transfer of solutions, metrics, and ideas from the private sector into the federal government. So therefore, in that sense, I don’t think at this point in time, you’re talking about a dramatic difference in the criteria or the mode of operation of successful federal people or private sector individuals.

Let me also mention that I was very, very pleasantly surprised to find when I joined the government that I had five project managers that were very, very talented. I was very impressed by the caliber of the people I had to work with, working for me. And I remain very, very impressed by the dedication and the hard work and the results of the people working for me in the federal sector.

Mr. Lawrence: Let me ask the question again, only this time focusing in on your technical skills, because you describe your experiences of leading technology organizations. How about comparing potential differences between creating technology solutions in the public sector as opposed to or compared to creating them in the private sector?

Mr. Enger: I don’t see a fundamental difference in the process of creating technology solutions in the public versus the private sector. In general, the private sector, though, is where you have the great breakthroughs in IT technology in terms of new software solutions, new hardware solutions, new communications solutions. So in general, the private sector is the leading edge, and the cauldron, in effect, where you have most of the breakthroughs in technology.

One goal of E-government is to look for the best solutions, whether they be public or private, and then implement the best solutions. What we do is we look carefully at a solution to a business problem in the government, and also outside. We do studies and then a cost/benefit analysis and then we determine where is the best solution, federal or private sector?

Let me add that my E-gov initiatives have very, very much used the private sector. We’ve outsourced a number of operations to the private sector. We’ll talk some more about this when we discuss USAJOBS E-training. But in effect, we have, under my five initiatives, used off-the-shelf commercial software and we’ve outsourced several operations from the public to the private sector.

Mr. Lawrence: That’s an interesting point, especially about the cost comparison.

What is golearn.gov and why was OPM recognized for this work? We’ll ask Norm Enger of OPM to tell us more about this when The Business of Government Hour returns.

(Intermission)

Mr. Lawrence: Welcome back to The Business of Government Hour. I’m Paul Lawrence, and this morning’s conversation is with Norm Enger. Norm’s the E-government program director in the Office of Personnel Management.

And joining us in our conversation is Tom Romeo.

Well, Norm, could you describe the E-government vision and how the six OPM E government initiatives relate to the employment life cycle?

Mr. Enger: Well, what we have done is we took the five original E-gov initiatives, and the five which we can talk in more detail deal with recruitment of federal people, training federal people, their personnel systems, their payroll systems, their security clearance systems. The original five deal with those five discrete areas. And if we think about it, that frames the employee life cycle from recruitment and eventually into retirement. I should add also, our systems feed into the retirement system, which is managed and run by OPM. So we were able to effectively communicate a vision of the employee life cycle to the agencies and to the human resource people in the federal sector.

This is very important, because one of the difficulties IT people have is we talk in acronyms and jargon, and very often, we lose the audience for our vision. By framing the OPM initiatives into an employee life cycle, we’ve been able to very effectively convey what we’re trying to accomplish to the human resource officers in the federal sector.

We also have a sixth initiative, and that is called HRIS, Human Resource Information Systems. What that really is is going into a phase two, if I can use that term, of E-government, and that really now is looking at an enterprise solution for the entire human resource piece of the federal line of business. We’ll talk about that a bit more later.

Mr. Romeo: Let’s talk about the six initiatives in more detail. Since recruitment is at the beginning of the employment life cycle, can you describe the recruitment one-stop online service?

Mr. Enger: The recruitment one-stop initiative basically has a role or a mission to help the citizen find federal jobs. We want to simplify the process of locating and applying for federal jobs. When I came on board about two years ago, the OPM ran an old legacy system site called USAJOBS. The initiative has completely replaced and transformed that site. In August of last year, we brought up a brand-new actually outsourced site, using commercial off-the-shelf software; radically changed the old site. We actually shut down the old site.

I might add that this took place in August, August 4th, I believe, of last year. And I was apprehensive, because shutting down a complete site and then going live with a new one, there is some risk there. We shut down the old site on a Friday, went live on a Monday morning. And to my great surprise, on the Friday before, on the old site, we had 20,000 people a day on the site; on Monday, we had 200,000 people on the site. We increased the volume tenfold over that weekend from the old to the new site. I must say, to my great happiness and satisfaction, there wasn’t a glitch at all. The site went fully operational, and it’s simply grown in utilization. We now have 60 million citizens a year go to our USAJOBS site to locate federal jobs, put in résumés, and also to look and see what’s available relative to positions in the federal sector.

This has really improved the hiring process, because one of the real passions of Director Kay Coles James is to fix the federal hiring process. And what we’re doing here is we have replaced an old site with a brand-new site where a citizen can go, see what jobs are available, they can build a résumé. They actually now are able to track the application they file. They can see the status of the application.

We also have on the site here, we have all kinds of guides relative to helping them to determine what jobs they might be suitable for, help them with their career pathing. So in effect, we’ve gone and replaced an old legacy system with a very, very user-friendly, vibrant, and very successful new job site called USAJOBS. This site also is used by the agencies to -- we call it data mining. They can go in there and search for candidates for positions, and in effect, use that as a database, if you will, to see who’s applied for federal jobs.

Mr. Lawrence: Okay. So we just described the process of recruiting and hiring. So now once hired, a government employee is encouraged to build skills across a variety of subjects. And as I understand it, in 2003, OPM received a Distinguished Technology Leadership Award for the successful implementation of golearn.gov. Could you tell us what makes this a successful and innovative site?

Mr. Enger: Well, the concept behind the E-training initiative, and the website is golearn.gov, was to provide to the federal employee one-stop shopping for high-quality learning resources. Going back historically, in July of 2002, we launched a relatively humble site. I was standing with Mark Forman, and Director Kay Coles James gave the introductory remarks and we launched this site, which had at that time roughly 30 or 40 online courses, web-based courses. Since July of 2002, we have improved the site and it has evolved. So from a humble beginning, we now have well over 3,000 courses on the site. We have hundreds of E-books. As of last year, we had 30 agencies using this for their primary training. By the end of this year, we’ll have 60 agencies. It’s become a primary site for quality online web-based training for federal people.

The site itself is a -- it’s a virtual building with floors. And people can, in effect, go into classrooms and look at and take any one of these 3,000 courses. We have hundreds of books of all types, both technology and management and career-building and ethics, on the site. We have mentoring. People can have mentors help them to answer questions they have about either technology or about careers or whatever. We have resource centers that tie them to dictionaries, encyclopedias, libraries, et cetera. We now have over 1 million people a year actually come to this site and use this site. And actually, to my great surprise, the utilization is half civilian and half military. The site is running 24 by 7; it’s available full-time, 7 days a week. It’s used by federal people on every continent in the world.

And we have received numerous awards for this site. We received a very prestigious Gracie Award this year from our peers in the private and federal sector. So we’re very proud to, in effect, have a site which is delivering to the federal workforce an easy-to-use, available way to have continuous learning, to let the federal people continuously improve their job skills and make learning a process that is not difficult to reach, but becomes a part of their normal job pattern, per se.

Mr. Romeo: Norm, providing security clearances to federal civilian workers can be a very lengthy process, especially given the heightened importance of background checks since the September 11th incident. How does the government’s E-clearance initiative facilitate the security clearance process?

Mr. Enger: Well, this initiative, E-clearance, essentially wants to speed up and also improve the process whereby one gets a security clearance. When I first came on board two years ago, to my surprise, there was no central system whereby an authorized person could check security clearances across the government. What we did is, we at OPM, through this initiative, gathered into a warehouse all of the clearance information held by individual civilian agencies. We built this warehouse, and then in January of 2003, we linked this warehouse to a DoD system, called Joint Personal Adjudication System.

And the system I’m talking about, we call it the clearance verification system, CVS. And for the first time ever, you had a system which let a person who’s authorized inquire across the entire civilian and military sector for the status of somebody’s clearance. This system we built will hold 98 percent of all active clearances. To our great satisfaction, it was used by the new Department of Homeland Security last year to stand up and become operational. It used this system to do the background checks of the employees coming into that department from 22 different organizations. Roughly 160,000 employees were actually checked with this system.

A second part is moving all of the paper and forms for a clearance. For example, one form is the SF-86 you fill out. It’s a 13-page paper form to request a security clearance. We’ve made this electronic, and we’re making all the forms that people use for clearances electronic. By doing this, we’re moving from a paper system to an electronic system, and this cuts down the time it takes to get a security clearance, the time it takes to move information around, and in effect, the basic goal of E-clearance is to speed up and also to improve the whole process of security clearances.

Mr. Lawrence: This is a fascinating conversation of the life cycle, but we’ve got to go to a break.

Rejoin us in a few minutes as we continue our conversation with Norm Enger of OPM. This is The Business of Government Hour.

(Intermission)

Mr. Lawrence: Welcome back to The Business of Government Hour. I’m Paul Lawrence, and this morning’s conversation is with Norm Enger, the E-government program director at the Office of Personnel Management.

And joining us in our conversation is Tom Romeo.

Well, Norm, we can’t talk about the employment life cycle without discussing one of the most important parts of employment, to the employees that is, the receiving of a paycheck, and that it’s current and consistent and timely. How does the E-payroll initiative help facilitate the government to do this in the most cost-effective manner?

Mr. Enger: Well, two years ago, when I took this position, to my great surprise, there were 26 agencies processing payroll for the 1.8 million civilian employees. I scratched my head, saying why are there 26 places paying these employees? The initiative essentially is to standardize and to consolidate civilian payroll processing. What we are doing is essentially we are consolidating civilian payroll processing from 26 down to basically two partnerships. We are collapsing from 26 down to two partnerships comprising four agencies, and eventually down just to two centers, if you will, that process civilian payroll. In the process, we’ll standardize payroll, but also, I might add, by shutting down these redundant operations, we’ll save the government, over a 10-year period, $1.1 billion. So in effect, we also don’t just achieve efficiency, but we also achieve significant cost savings by these initiatives. I might add that our partners here, the agencies that are in effect comprising the partnerships are Agriculture, Interior, Defense, and GSA.

Mr. Romeo: Norm, can you describe the vision, goals, and benefits of the Enterprise Human Resources Integration initiative? What is the EHRI’s relationship to the other E-gov initiatives?

Mr. Enger: Well, essentially, this initiative, EHRI, has several goals. Again, going back several years, I was quite surprised to realize that, from my point of view anyway, there really wasn’t a very rich corporate database on the civilian workforce. One part of EHRI, one goal is to build a corporate database or warehouse of real accurate information about the 1.8 million people in the civilian workforce.

Last September, September 2003, we actually brought up this new operation, this new website used by federal people. And what we have now is a richer and richer repository, describing in more and more detail the skills, the abilities, et cetera, of the 1.8 million civilian people. This is used for all kinds of workforce analysis, planning. We can look in there and determine retirement rates; we can do studies of age, sex, ethnic backgrounds, et cetera. So what we’ve done here is establish a corporate warehouse.

A second role of EHRI is to move away from paper personnel form. We call it the EOPF, Electronic Official Personnel Folder. What we’re doing is we’re leading the government in terms of showing the government how to get away from those voluminous and bulky personnel folders and move toward an electronic personnel record for the employee. Eventually when a person joins the government, there’ll be an electronic record created for them, a personnel record, and that will follow them through their federal career. So a second part of this is to, in effect, move toward an electronic personnel system.

To answer your question about its relationship, this initiative is defining all of the data elements that pertain to federal human resources and payroll. We have defined over 800 data elements that really comprise the standardization, if you will, of the information that is used in the federal personnel and payroll systems, and this also are the standards being followed by my other initiatives.

Mr. Lawrence: Norm, you’ve described the scenario where Executive Branch agencies may potentially invest in duplicative human resource information systems that perform core personnel transaction processing. For those of us who aren’t HR professionals, could you describe what a core personnel transaction process is? And then I’m curious, with this consolidation, you know, how you thought about, you know, the effect standardization will have on the government and others involved in the HR area.

Mr. Enger: The core personnel transaction processing is really the processing that updates the employee personnel record, the actions that update that record. This is called in the federal government the SF-5052 processing. This initiative, the HRIS, essentially is now moving toward an enterprise view of the human resource line of business.

Let me address it this way. We proved that the government could be transformed in a very short space of time. I think the original E-gov initiatives, the 24, have shown that there can be rapid change in the federal government. You can implement solutions in a very short timeframe. You can show tangible results, either dollar-wise or utilization. So in effect, this is really building upon the initial 24 and our five, I should say. And now we’re saying let’s look not just at those five points, if you will: training, recruitment -- look at the entire business itself of human capital in the federal government.

This HRIS is really using something that OMB has really pioneered called the Federal Enterprise Architecture. What that really says is that the OMB FEA is looking at the government as a business, just as you would look at a commercial private business, and what it’s done, looked at it across all of its operations and then defined lines of business: one being financial management, another one being human capital. And what we’re doing is we’re looking at the entire human capital line of business, what people do in the government relative to people and payroll. And what we’re doing is we are, within that context, looking at all the operations, all the business functions there. And now we’re looking to improve across the board, where we can, with better solutions and making the government more efficient and also to, in effect, improve how human capital operates in the federal sector.

Mr. Romeo: Norm, you just talked about the business processes and how they go across the federal government. All of the E-gov initiatives involve coordination of IT systems across the federal government, also. How is OPM working with other federal agencies to accomplish the goals of the different E-gov initiatives?

Mr. Enger: The agencies are right now all signing agreements to use wherever possible the 24 original E-gov initiatives. For example, we are on the Steering Committee, and we’re using E-authentication; another initiative. E-authentication essentially is used to credential or to identify who is on a terminal. That’s fundamental to all of E-gov, because E-gov depends on the Internet, on web-based services. So for example, in this one case, we’re on the Steering Committee and we plan to use the initiative.

The same thing goes with other initiatives. We’re using USA Services, an E-gov initiative, which provides help desk services to operations. So what’s happening here is that all agencies, including OPM, wherever possible, are incorporating and using other E-gov initiatives.

Mr. Lawrence: How much funding has been allocated to the E-gov initiatives?

Mr. Enger: Well, the OPM funding in 2004, we received approximately $10.8 million in appropriation. We also have fee-for-service operations for E-training and recruitment one-stop. So in effect, we have a combination of appropriations, and also, we have fee-for-service operations.

Mr. Romeo: What other critical success factors besides funding are needed to make these initiatives a success?

Mr. Enger: Well, when you have these initiatives, you obviously want agencies to shut down redundant systems and migrate to your initiative. Well, what happens here is you have to give tangible evidence that you have a solution. I think that a critical success factor is not just to say I have achieved success at E-training or USAJOBS or E-clearance, but you have to demonstrate and have a tangible, kick-the-tires proof that you have a solution. So step one in terms of a critical factor is you’ve got to be able to demonstrate a viable robust solution before people will shut down their old or redundant systems.

Another very important factor here is agency participation in the initiative. It’s very, very important that you outreach, that you work with agency partners. You go out and, in effect, you sell, you show what you’ve done and get buy-in from people that you’re asking to migrate to the initiative. So I think these two things: one, really have a solution, not smoke; and also to go out and really build up coalitions of support so people will use and migrate to your solution.

Mr. Lawrence: We left the conversation about E-payroll and the human resource information systems. The one thing I meant to ask was what’s the timetable for their implementation?

Mr. Enger: Well, for example, E-payroll, we have a target of September 2004, this year, for many of the migrations to be finished. We have at this point all of the agencies lined up for migrations, and we will pretty much meet the target of September 2004 for migrations.

Let me also add that in general, the plan of E-government is that by September 2004, the initiatives will graduate. And what that means, they’ll be operational. They’ll have achieved what the original goal was, is that from two years ago, the start, until September 2004, we have actually gone from concept to real operations. So the answer to you with E-payroll is, our target is September 2004, to, in effect, have finished many, many of the migrations.

The other one, HRIS, that you mentioned, this is really starting now. It’s a newer initiative, called a line of business initiative. And in fact, a task force for this is being formed for this as we speak, and I believe OMB and OPM will have an event on March 18th, this month, to announce the formation of this task force. And again, the task force and initiative, they’ll address enterprise solutions for the human capital line of business.

Mr. Lawrence: That’s interesting. It sounds like 2004 will be a busy year.

What’s the future of E-government? We’ll ask Norm Enger of OPM for this thoughts and perspectives when The Business of Government Hour returns.

(Intermission)

Mr. Lawrence: Welcome back to The Business of Government Hour. I’m Paul Lawrence, and this morning’s conversation is with Norm Enger, E-government program director at the Office of Personnel Management.

And joining us in our conversation is Tom Romeo.

Mr. Romeo: Norm, we’ve talked a lot about the current E-government initiatives. In your opinion, what others do you think the future will hold?

Mr. Enger: Well, the vision of E-government is a government that is citizen-centered, not bureaucracy- or agency-centered, results-oriented, and market-based. The goal of E-government is to provide one-stop online access to the citizen to information and services. Citizens should be able to find what they want quickly, in seconds; not in hours or whatever, or days. A good example of this, for example, is the FirstGov website, where a citizen can go to a site and from that one site, they’re tied to all federal agencies; they’re tied to a variety of resources relative to grants, to national parks, to employment opportunities. So what we’re looking for here is to use the web, the Internet, to provide the citizen with very rapid -- three clicks or whatever -- access to a wide variety of accurate information that in effect provides them with first-quality service.

Mr. Romeo: How do you envision the government will conduct transactions across other federal agencies and/or state and local governments?

Mr. Enger: Well, what’s happening is that some initiatives are in effect dealing with the federal, state, and local situation. For example, one Homeland Security initiative is a secure portal that will deal with disaster management; in effect, dealing with disaster management and public safety, E-government is in effect developing systems and communications that link together federal, state, and local governments into one context, into one response to a disaster or public safety challenge.

Mr. Lawrence: Norm, you’ve been working in the field of E-government now for some time. What advice would you have for future leaders in E-government on how to be successful in this field?

Mr. Enger: I would advise future leaders in E-government to be aware that major transformations in federal business systems requires a full recognition of the need to build coalitions of support in affected agencies. Change management is a major factor in the success of E-government. Future E-gov leaders should not focus on technology solutions without recognizing the other dimensions of change necessary for success.

Mr. Lawrence: And how about in terms of a person considering a career in public service? You’ve been in both sectors, and you moved into public service after a long career in the private sector. What advice would you give to somebody interested in joining public service?

Mr. Enger: Well, I think this is a very exciting and challenging time for a young person to join the federal government. Our government faces challenges, even though we are the world’s greatest economy and have the world’s greatest and strongest military force. What is very exciting, and I think E-gov has made this possible, is that we have shown that you can transform government operations in a very, very short space of time. We can show that government can, in effect, reach out and, in effect, become more efficient, more effective, more responsive to the citizen population in a short space of time.

My advice to a young person considering a public service career would be to go and look at the OPM USAJOBS website. The site is www.usajobs.opm.gov. On this website, the person can locate a vast array of educational and job opportunities, all kinds of internships, grants, and job situations. Young people will be able to use the site. They can also on the site develop a job résumé to apply for a federal job.

Let me also add, there is also a Presidential Management Fellow program designed to attract into federal service outstanding young men and women from a variety of disciplines. Again, if the person goes to our site, USAJOBS, they will find more information about this PMF, this fellowship program.

Mr. Lawrence: Well, Norm, that’s our last question. Tom and I want to thank you for joining us this morning and being our guest.

And would you like to tell the people the website one more time, in case they’re --

Mr. Enger: Yeah, the website I mentioned earlier was www.usajobs.opm.gov/; g-o-v.

Mr. Lawrence: Thank you very much.

This has been The Business of Government Hour, featuring a conversation with Norm Enger, E-government program director in the Office of Personnel Management.

Be sure and visit us on the web at businessofgovernment.org. There, you can learn more about our programs and research into new approaches to improving government effectiveness, and you can also get a transcript of today’s very interesting conversation. Once again, that’s businessofgovernment.org.

This is Paul Lawrence. Thank you for listening.