Office of Management and Budget Function in the United States

To Review

Introduction
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) plays a unique role working across the Federal Government to help departments implement the commitments and priorities of the President. We develop the President’s Budget to ensure that the Federal Government makes needed investments in economic growth, opportunity, and security, while staying on a sound financial path. We work to ensure that, through effective management, the Federal Government delivers the services that the American people expect in smarter, faster, and better ways. And we work to ensure that federal regulations protect the health, welfare, and safety of Americans and promote economic growth, job creation, competitiveness, and innovation.

Over the past eight years we’ve made remarkable progress in each of these areas. Since 2009, Federal deficits have fallen by about two-thirds as a share of the economy, even as we made important investments in economic growth and national security. We have improved our long-term budget outlook significantly as well – mainly due to a growing economy, policies that ensure that the highest-income taxpayers pay a fairer share, the winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and dramatically slower growth in health care costs, thanks in part to the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

We have led the Administration’s successful efforts to leverage technology and innovation to produce a smarter, savvier, and more effective government for the American people. We have made important progress in modernizing and improving citizen-facing services, including by establishing the United States Digital Service. We have integrated best practices to reform the way we buy and operate information technology and other products and services. We have cut wasteful spending, saving taxpayers billions of dollars on Federal IT, real estate, contracting and other costs.

And we have led efforts to create a 21st century regulatory system – one that protects Americans and promotes economic growth. Major Federal regulations issued during the first seven years of this Administration have generated approximately $250 billion in annual net benefits, according to preliminary estimates. We also established and institutionalized a retrospective review process – an unprecedented, government-wide review of existing regulations – to create a more cost-effective, evidence-based regulatory system. Through this initiative, we have achieved an estimated $37 billion in cost savings, reduced paperwork, and produced other benefits for Americans over five years.

In this memo, I will lay out in more detail our accomplishments, as well as a vision for how we can continue our progress in the years ahead.

A Record of Economic Growth and Fiscal Progress
When President Obama took office in January 2009, the economy was shrinking at its fastest rate in over 50 years. Nearly 800,000 Americans lost their jobs in that month alone. But thanks to the President’s leadership, the resilience and hard work of the American people, and the decisive actions of policymakers, the U.S. economy has been an engine of job growth and economic expansion, outpacing other advanced economies in recovery from the Great Recession.

In total, American businesses have added 15.6 million new jobs since February 2010, including more than 800,000 new manufacturing jobs. The economy has experienced the longest streak of total job growth on record, adding jobs in 74 straight months. Since October 2009, the unemployment rate has been cut by more than half, falling to its lowest level in over nine years. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has rebounded to more than 11 percent above its pre-crisis peak. In 2015, median household income rose at the fastest rate on record, with the largest gains going to middle- and working-class families.

16 Million Private-Sector Jobs

The President, with the support of OMB and the entire Administration, made critical investments to spur this economic growth, including through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act); the auto industry rescue; the Affordable Care Act (ACA); and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. At the same time, we succeeded in putting the Nation on a sound fiscal path. Since 2009, Federal deficits have fallen by about two-thirds as a share of the economy, and from 2009 to 2015, Federal deficits underwent the most rapid, sustained period of reduction since just after World War II. The President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 Budget shows how we can continue to invest in our economic future and national security and address the country’s greatest challenges while further driving down deficits and reducing the debt over the next decade.

Our record of fiscal achievement extends to the medium- and long-term budget outlook, which have both improved significantly. Since 2010, our estimate of the 2020 deficit under current policies has come down by $521 billion, or more than one-third. Our estimate of the 25-year “fiscal gap” – the amount of deficit reduction needed to put the Nation’s finances on stable footing for the next 25 years – has also shrunk by a significant percentage.

Deficits during this Administration and projected future deficits have fallen due to three main factors: the economic growth described above; deficit reduction measures, including restoring Clinton-era tax rates on the highest-income Americans and winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and dramatically slower growth in health care costs, due in part to the health reforms contained in the ACA.

When President Obama took office, he immediately identified health care costs as one of the major drivers of the Nation’s long-term fiscal challenges, calling for health reform as “a step we must take if we hope to bring down our deficit in the years to come.” Since the ACA was signed into law in 2010, there has been significant progress toward providing all Americans with quality, affordable health care, including reducing the uninsured rate to its lowest level on record, as well as slowing health care cost growth.

In recent years, health spending has grown slowly in both private insurance and public programs. When adjusted for inflation and the number of enrollees, spending in Medicare has fallen over the past five years and spending on private insurance has grown at a small fraction of the average annual rate from 2000 to 2010. While some of the slow growth in health care costs in recent years can be attributed to the Great Recession and its aftermath, at least in the private sector, there is increasing evidence that much of it is the result of structural changes, including the reforms enacted in the ACA.

The health care cost slowdown is already yielding substantial fiscal dividends. Based on current budget estimates, projected Federal health care spending for 2020 has decreased by $224 billion, a reduction of 15 percent. These savings are above and beyond the deficit reduction directly attributed to the ACA when it was passed. In addition, since the 2009 trustees’ report, the insolvency date for Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund has been pushed back 11 years, an improvement due in large part to Medicare payment reforms enacted in the ACA. These effects will grow as the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, which was created by the ACA, tests and scales up additional alternative payment models that incentivize quality and efficiency.

CONTINUING OUR NATION’S ECONOMIC AND FISCAL PROGRESS IN THE FUTURE
The President has led the country through a remarkable recovery from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, established a foundation for stronger, more durable economic growth, and strengthened America’s long-term fiscal outlook. Still, more work remains to ensure that the economy works for everybody and that the Nation’s finances remain on a strong and sustainable path. Each of the President’s Budgets demonstrated that investments in growth and opportunity are compatible with, and necessary for, responsible fiscal progress. And I believe it is imperative that the next Administration and next Congress continue to prioritize investing in these areas in order to keep the economy thriving.

Eliminating the Threat of Harmful Sequestration Cuts. While discretionary spending restraint has played a role in deficit reduction, indiscriminate, harmful, automatic spending cuts known as “sequestration” – including sequestration cuts to date and projected sequestration cuts in 2018 and beyond – contribute only a small fraction to the improvement in the medium-term fiscal outlook described above. At the same time, sequestration has shortchanged investment in our economic health and national security. The American people continue to spur our economic and fiscal progress and it is critical that the Federal Government support, rather than impede, economic growth.

Sequestration was never intended to take effect: rather, it was supposed to threaten such drastic, arbitrary cuts to both defense and non-defense funding that policymakers would be motivated to come to the table and reduce the deficit through smart, balanced reforms. When that did not happen, instead of contributing to our fiscal health, the sequestration cuts that took effect in March 2013 reduced GDP by 0.6 percentage points and cost 750,000 jobs, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Beyond the broader economic impacts, these sequestration cuts also had severe programmatic impacts, shortchanging investments that would have contributed to future growth, reducing economic opportunity, imposing unnecessary risk to our national security and harming vulnerable populations. For example, hundreds of important scientific projects went unfunded, with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding the lowest number of competitive research project grants in over a decade, limiting research into brain disorders, infectious disease, and cancer. The Department of Defense (DOD) furloughed about 650,000 civilian employees, and had to significantly curtail Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps training activities, which hurt their readiness to respond in the event of an emergency. Head Start enrollment dipped to its lowest level since 2001, with tens of thousands of low-income children losing access to Head Start and forgoing critical early learning experiences and health and nutrition services intended to help improve their cognitive, physical, and emotional development. Fewer low-income families received housing vouchers, with a total of 67,000 Housing Choice Vouchers lost, which reduced access to affordable, safe, and stable housing for low-income families.

Washington dysfunction impeded the hard work of the American people to grow the economy in other ways. Congressional Republicans shut down the Government for 16 days in October 2013, which resulted in economic disruption that the Council of Economic Advisors estimated to be up to $6 billion in lost output. Federal employee furloughs cost the taxpayers roughly $2 billion for work that wasn’t performed and a range of programs, from the National Parks to NIH research, were harmed. Following this failure to govern, policymakers recognized the need to move away from manufactured crises and austerity budgeting, helping to lay the groundwork for job market gains and stronger growth. The Administration worked with Congress to secure two consecutive bipartisan budget agreements (the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 and the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015) to alleviate harmful sequestration cuts, providing balanced sequestration relief for defense and non-defense priorities and replacing the savings with a smarter mix of revenues and spending reforms. The Council of Economic Advisers estimated that the 2013 budget deal would create about 350,000 jobs over the course of 2014 and 2015, so it likely made a significant contribution to the improvement in the labor market in those years. The 2015 agreement was expected to create an estimated 340,000 jobs in 2016 alone, while supporting middle-class families, investing in long-term growth, protecting Social Security, and safeguarding national security.

With sequestration projected to return in full in 2018, Congress will need to act again to finally and fully end sequestration. Doing so would avoid cuts that limit our ability to invest in the building blocks of long-term economic growth, like research and development, infrastructure, job training, and education, and that put our national security at unnecessary risk, not only through pressures on defense spending, but also through pressures on the Department of State, USAID, the Department of Homeland Security, and other non-defense programs that help keep us safe. I urge the next Administration and next Congress to take action to lift the ongoing specter of sequestration and ensure that our country is able to invest in our growth and security.

Health, Tax and Immigration Reform. To continue our progress, the President has called for strategic investments to grow our economy paired with smart reforms that address the true drivers of our long-term fiscal challenges, including an aging population, health care cost growth, and insufficient revenues to keep pace with these trends. The 2017 Budget includes significant health reforms that will help sustain the recent historic slowdown in health care cost growth while improving health care quality. It achieves significant deficit reduction from reducing tax benefits for high-income households, helping to bring in sufficient revenues to make vital investments while also helping to meet our promises to seniors. And it reflects the President’s support for commonsense, comprehensive immigration reform to fix our broken immigration system, which will boost economic growth, reduce deficits, and strengthen Social Security. The positive fiscal impact of these reforms grows over time and the next Administration should consider a similar path.

Addressing the Economic and Fiscal Risk of Climate Change. From the beginning of the Administration, the President recognized that climate change is not just an environmental challenge, but a pressing economic and fiscal threat. As with many of the challenges we face, a failure to act now will lead to greater costs and risks to our economy in the future. The impacts of climate change – like the interaction of severe storms and higher sea levels, higher temperatures and longer wildfire seasons – threaten to disrupt the Nation’s agriculture and ecosystems, water and food supplies, energy system, infrastructure, health and safety, and national security.

Through the Paris Agreement, we’ve set a goal of limiting global warming to well below two degrees Celsius. Meeting this goal could avoid damages equivalent to three percent of global annual output by 2100, relative to global warming of four degrees Celsius. In the United States, that could translate to more than $2 trillion in avoided damages each year in real terms by 2100 – the equivalent of nearly $350 billion per year in today’s economy. The Federal balance sheet is also at stake. Without ambitious action on mitigation and adaptation, climate change is expected to reduce Federal revenue by hundreds of billions of dollars and increase Federal expenditures in areas like disaster relief, crop insurance, health care, and property management by tens of billions of dollars by the end of the century.

But, even as we have taken aggressive action to slow the change in our climate, the President has understood the need to adapt to the changes already taking place. That’s why the Administration has led the Federal Government in integrating resilience into the fabric of how we build, rebuild, plan, and prepare for the impacts of climate change. We’ve been incorporating the best available science and data – including temperature and sea level rise projections – into planning and design. And we’ve been collaborating with a wide range of stakeholders – including State, tribal and local elected officials, business leaders, and science and policy experts – to maximize impact. To ensure communities are better prepared for the impacts of climate change today and tomorrow, the Administration has been investing in communities to ensure they don’t just rebuild in the aftermath of a disaster, but rebuild smarter.

The next Administration should further invest in our Nation’s transition to a climate-smart economy that addresses the fiscal risks that climate change poses to businesses and governments alike. The President’s 2017 Budget includes significant investments in clean energy and other innovation that will help grow the economy and create jobs. It includes investments in a new, sustainable transportation system that will speed goods to market while reducing America’s reliance on oil, cut carbon pollution, and strengthen our resilience to the effects of the changing climate.

A Government of the Future
From his first days in office and with the creation of the first Chief Performance Officer of the U.S. Government, the President has prioritized improving how government works — by directing change that makes a significant, tangible, and positive difference in the economy and the lives of the American people. Over the past eight years through the President’s Management Agenda, OMB has led the Administration’s successful efforts to modernize and improve citizen-facing services, reform the way we buy and operate information technology in the 21st century, eliminate wasteful spending, reduce the Federal real property footprint, and help spur innovation in the private sector. This approach is working. This Administration has achieved nearly $4.7 billion in IT savings, saved more than $2 billion in Federal contracting, and decreased its real estate footprint by 25 million square feet.

This management agenda has four pillars: 1) Effectiveness—delivering a Government that works for citizens and businesses; 2) Efficiency—increasing quality and value in core operations; 3) Economic Growth— opening Government-funded data and research to the public to spur innovation, entrepreneurship, and job opportunities; and 4) People and Culture—unlocking the full potential of today’s Federal workforce and building the workforce we need for tomorrow, which is addressed in the memo of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The Administration executed the President’s Management Agenda through Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) Goals, which were introduced by this Administration to improve coordination across multiple agencies to help drive performance on key priorities and issues.

EFFECTIVENESS: A GOVERNMENT THAT WORKS FOR CITIZENS AND BUSINESSES
President Obama has leveraged technology and innovation to produce a smarter, savvier, and more effective government for the American people. This Administration has introduced best practices from the public and private sectors and is using more modern technologies to break down traditional silos and make government operate more efficiently.

Modernizing IT and Strengthening Cybersecurity. Over the past eight years, OMB has focused on helping agencies modernize their IT infrastructure and strengthen their cybersecurity posture. Modernization is not simply replacing outdated IT systems with newer ones. It is a holistic approach that fundamentally transforms how agencies accomplish their missions. This topic is explored in further detail in the attached document – “Toward an Ever Better Digital Government” – which discusses the Administration’s approach to modernizing the use of technology and technical expertise in government, and provides a roadmap for the future. As this working paper notes, the U.S. Government is still in the early stages of this modernization effort.

Perhaps most critically, the Administration has taken aggressive action to enhance the government’s cybersecurity posture. Released in February 2016, the President’s Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP) is the capstone of more than seven years of determined effort in this regard. It builds upon lessons learned from cybersecurity trends, threats, and intrusions that have occurred in recent years. Highlights of the CNAP include creating the first ever Federal Chief Information Security Officer and proposing a multiyear, multibillion dollar IT Modernization Fund. OMB also issued the first Cybersecurity Workforce Strategy, which enhances agencies’ ability to recruit and retain our cyber talent, and facilitated the hiring of more than 6,000 cyber employees in 2016, eclipsing 2015 by over 1,000 hires.

OMB also issued updated and revised OMB A-130 guidance for government-wide IT management, security, and privacy. The guidance had last been updated in 2000, prior to the advent of pervasive networked, social and mobile information technology. Under the new guidance, agencies are required to identify the expected lifespan of IT systems and to develop and implement plans to retire and upgrade IT systems with regularity. Agencies are required to ensure sufficient IT hardware and software visibility and asset management; to exercise comprehensive IT risk management; and to encrypt, by default, moderate- and high-impact data.

Modernization also requires agencies to reengineer underlying business processes and to increasingly migrate to more modern delivery models for IT and cybersecurity, such as cloud and shared services. Cloud-based IT delivery allows agencies to pay for only the resources and services they use without overhead costs. To realize these benefits, OMB issued the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy in 2011.

In 2010, OMB launched the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) to reduce the number of Federal data centers and associated costs. Since that time, agencies have closed over 1,900 data centers and saved nearly $1 billion. However, the Federal government still operates more than 9,000 data centers. To address this, the Data Center Optimization Initiative requires agencies to consolidate their data center infrastructure and aims to reduce costs by $2.7 billion by the end of FY 2018.

The Administration also implemented numerous reform efforts to reduce IT duplication and improve outcomes. New data-driven reviews such as TechStats and PortfolioStats analyzed poor-performing IT investments as well as enterprise-wide IT management challenges. Combined, these programs helped the government achieve nearly $4.7 billion in savings.

The Administration has also engaged in a series of targeted initiatives to secure Federal networks and data. Through a series of policy efforts and initiatives civilian agencies increased their use of Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards from 1 percent at the outset of the Administration to 85 percent today. OMB and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have worked with federal, civilian agencies to identify, assess, and secure their high value IT assets, which comprise unclassified information and IT systems that, if compromised, pose the highest risk to Federal Government operations and public trust. Lastly, DHS began implementing the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program to help agencies increase their ability to identify and manage assets on their networks and to detect vulnerabilities. These efforts ensure that agencies have the capabilities to safeguard their networks, systems, and data well into the future.

Delivering Digital Services to the Public. In 2014, the Administration launched the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) to help improve the performance and cost-effectiveness of the government’s most important public-facing digital services via the application of modern technology best practices. Over the last two years, USDS has executed hands-on technical engagements to improve outcomes on major agency projects, partnering with departmental personnel.

For example, we improved the ability for Veterans to apply for health care benefits online through a new digital application on vets.gov. USDS has worked with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to move from a highly troubled online application for health care (which subjected up to 70 percent of veterans to error messages that blocked them from applying for health care online) to an improved new online application that has resulted in an eight-fold increase in online applications, helping put VA on track to increase the percentage of Veterans applying online from 10 percent in 2015 to over 50 percent in 2017.

USDS has also helped modernize our country’s immigration system by digitizing the external application and internal review process for more than seven million annual immigration applications. Through the new my.USCIS.gov platform and Electronic Immigration System an increasing share of the immigration system is now online, including the green card renewal application (I-90), which has a 93 percent user satisfaction rate.

And, USDS worked with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to introduce Secure Access, a user verification process that provides taxpayers with convenient, secure access to their IRS information while protecting taxpayer information from automated fraudulent attacks.

In addition to building these important services, USDS has helped to create a pipeline for top technology talent from the private sector to participate in tours of duty with the Federal Government and partner with top civil servants to modernize some of our most critical public services and ensure a lasting culture of innovation that will serve the American people for years to come. More than 200 engineers, designers, data scientists, and product managers have answered the President’s call and signed on for a tour of duty with USDS. It is my hope that future Administrations will follow this model and bring top technical talent into government to ensure that we are best equipped to deliver modern services to the American people.

Protecting Privacy in the Digital Era. As more and more personal information is collected and shared in our digital economy, the Federal Government needs to ensure that its privacy practices evolve to appropriately reflect the Government’s use of emerging technologies, while also maintaining America’s position as a leader in innovation. To meet this challenge, OMB led a groundbreaking effort to enhance how Federal agencies protect the privacy of individuals and their information.

Key initiatives included the establishment of a Federal Privacy Council, the creation of a new privacy office in OMB, and the appointment of a Senior Advisor for Privacy. In addition, OMB directed agencies to evaluate the effectiveness of their privacy programs and designate a senior privacy official. In response, agencies across the Federal Government increased the resources dedicated to protecting privacy, revised policies and restructured their privacy programs, and appointed a new cadre of senior privacy officials. Finally, OMB published new guidance and spearheaded initiatives to improve how agencies prepare for and respond to breaches involving personal information.

Together, these efforts are designed to shift the focus of privacy programs away from a “check-the-box” compliance approach to a more strategic, continuous, and risk-based approach. This shift will help agencies make better decisions, use accurate and timely data more effectively, avoid risks, reduce costs, and improve the efficiency of government programs.

Transforming Federal-Local Partnerships. Across the country, citizens and local leaders are seeking a Federal Government that is more effective, responsive, and collaborative in addressing their needs and challenges. Far too often, the Federal Government has taken a “one-size-fits-all” approach to working with communities and left local leaders on their own to find Federal resources and navigate disparate programs. Responding to the call for change from local officials and leaders nationwide, OMB has worked across agencies to provide a more seamless process for communities – crossing agency and program silos and cutting red tape to support cities, towns, counties and tribes in implementing locally-developed plans for improvement. This work has been done through a Community Solutions team at OMB and through an interagency Community Solutions Task Force that have helped on projects from re-lighting city streets to breathing new life into half-empty rural main streets. We created new training opportunities to equip career officials with skills to identify local priorities, build local capacity, and use data to measure success, replicate what works, and make evidence-based investments. And we established communities of practice for peer-to-peer learning and innovation sharing in and across communities.

Building on this success, the President established a Council for Community Solutions to streamline and improve the way the Federal Government works with cities, counties, and communities – rural, tribal, urban and suburban – to improve outcomes. The Council includes leadership from agencies, departments, and offices across the Federal Government and the White House, who together will develop and implement policy that puts local priorities first, highlights successful solutions based on best practices, and streamlines Federal support for communities.

EFFICIENCY: INCREASING QUALITY AND VALUE IN CORE OPERATIONS
Over the years, duplicative administrative functions and back-office services have made the Government less effective and wasted taxpayer dollars. Over the course of this Administration, OMB has worked to improve agencies’ core management activities through a focus on data-driven management to identify what works and what doesn’t work across government. By better leveraging the experience that exists within agencies to identify and share best practices, agencies can operate more effectively and efficiently within existing resources. The Administration has fostered the sharing of data across agencies for IT, acquisition, financial management, human capital, and real property.

Buying Smart. In 2014, the Administration launched category management government-wide, drawing on best practices in both the public and private sectors. It is an innovative approach that is shifting the Federal Government from managing purchases individually across thousands of procurement units to buying as one, in order to leverage the Government’s purchasing power. We advanced innovative and effective category management policies that streamline the more than $8 billion in annual spending for IT software, hardware, and mobile services and devices. As a result of these efforts, we have saved more than $2 billion in Federal contracting and are on track to save an additional $3.1 billion by the end of FY 2017. We have seen prices drop by as much as 50 percent since the release of the workstation policy in 2015. Forty-five percent of the $1.4 billion in spending for laptops and desktops are now approved best in class solutions; so far, we have already seen the number of duplicative contracts drop by 25 percent.

OMB

In 2015, we launched the first-ever Digital IT Acquisition Professional Training program with a curriculum based in principles of agile software design so that acquisition professionals could gain valuable hands-on experience applying modern IT procurement strategies. And we launched the TechFAR Hub, which provides agency personnel involved in the procurement process with practical tools and resources for applying industry best practices to digital service acquisitions. To support these and other innovations, agencies have designated acquisition innovation advocates who are helping the workforce test new and better contracting strategies that shorten delivery times, increase customer satisfaction, and improve value.

We have also made strides in increasing efficiency through the purchase of reusable and open source software. The Federal Government spends more than $6 billion each year on approximately 50,000 software transactions. To cut costs, OMB released the Federal Source Code Policy to mitigate wasteful spending associated with duplicative software acquisitions. Increasing the use of, contribution to, and publication of open source software also expands our transparency and promotes innovation.

Optimizing the Use of Federal Real Estate. In 2013, the Administration issued the “Freeze the Footprint” policy to freeze the Federal Government’s real estate footprint and restrict the growth of excess or underutilized properties. This was the first government-wide policy that required Federal agencies to dispose of existing property to support new property acquisitions, and was a major success. Through this policy and administrative authorities, agencies took significant and creative steps to manage their real estate inventories by freezing portfolio growth, measuring the cost and utilization of real property to support more efficient use, and identifying opportunities to reduce the portfolio through asset disposal. As a result of these efforts, between FY 2013 and FY 2015, the Government’s office and warehouse portfolio declined by 24.7 million square feet. Building on this success, in 2015 the Administration issued the National Strategy for the Efficient Use of Real Property and the Reduce the Footprint policy, which was the first time an Administration established a government-wide policy objective to reduce the size of the government’s real estate footprint. When fully implemented, this policy will reduce the government’s real property footprint by an additional 61 million square feet between FY 2016 and FY 2020.

Engaging Agency Leadership with Data. In 2015, the Administration launched annual FedStat reviews with major agencies, establishing data-informed discussions about agency-specific administrative management priorities at the Deputy Secretary level, and highlighting successful practices and identifying areas of risk and potential improvement. These data-driven reviews led to a number of tangible improvements and provide a useful tool by which to continually improve the effectiveness and efficiency of individual agencies and the Government as a whole. The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) FedStat, for instance, drove action to improve the agency’s financial management. The agency identified differences in finance performance across DOJ bureaus and diagnosed potential root causes to help improve performance.

Streamlining Infrastructure Permitting. Federal agencies have worked to expedite the review and permitting of major infrastructure projects, including bridges, transit, railways, waterways, roads, and renewable energy projects. For example, federal agencies completed the permitting and review for the Tappan Zee Bridge in 1.5 years for a process that would have taken three to five years. The Administration has also laid the groundwork for future progress, working with Congress to include reforms in Title 41 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act). The Administration has taken aggressive efforts to implement these reforms, creating the Federal Infrastructure Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC) to better coordinate and streamline agency reviews, Chief Environmental Review and Permitting Officers at each agency to ensure there is a central point of accountability for meeting established timelines, and the Permitting Dashboard so businesses, State and local governments, and the public can track major infrastructure projects as they go through the permitting process.