Quick Solutions for Agency-Wide OMB Exhibit 300 Preparation

QUICK SOLUTIONS FOR AGENCY-WIDE EXHIBIT 300 PREPARATION

Summer was once the season for preparing Exhibit 300 business cases for justifying IT investments to the Office of Management and Budgets (OMB), but this year the startup activity is already underway in many agencies. Paperwork for the Fiscal Year 2007 IT budget cycle is growing like weeds, even before a warm spring sun can beckon dandelions and crabgrass. And even before OMB issues its guidance in an updated Circular A-11, which sometimes is full of surprises!

This article outlines a few of the approaches we recommend. These are admittedly short-term fixes, but we will defer our grand plan for CPIC process improvement and integration until a future newsletter. So this month we focus only on short-term, tactical solutions for Exhibit 300 business cases.

Use an Agency-Wide Approach. IT budgets are an enterprise-wide issue, and this requires leadership, prioritization, and direction from the top of the agency. This should involve the agency head, the deputy, the Chief Information Officer, the budget officer, Chief Financial Officer, the Chief Procurement Officer, and ideally other members of the agency decision-making board required by the Clinger-Cohen Act.

Provide Leadership for Your Exhibit 300s. We don't think it's enough for an Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) to merely act as rule maker, reviewer or referee of business cases. The OCIO organization needs to play a leadership role--of aligning IT with agency business mission and helping the entire organization to work together to prepare successful business cases. This is a responsibility that cannot simply be offloaded to subordinates or contractors.

Work as a Team on All 300s. You need to collaborate on an agency-wide basis when preparing your Exhibit 300s. All of the business cases should map to a common set of goals, performance metrics, acquisition, EA, security, project management methodology, and E-Gov Strategy. It is an incredible waste of money and time to allow 5, 12, or 30 individual projects to prepare separate, disconnected business cases. And the result is a free-lance hodgepodge that doesn't fit together.

Agree Upfront on Enterprise Investment Priorities. Avoid agency horse races, where Exhibit 300s compete with each other for funding. A smarter approach is for the CIO and other members of the agency leadership team to agree in advance on priorities that identify how IT spending will support mission and business requirements. This enables you to focus 100% of your energies on core needs … and winners.

Link to the Agency Performance Plan and Metrics. Upfront, you should plan to link IT to agency goals and performance objectives. Metrics for IT performance should map to performance measures in the annual performance plan and to PART data.

Share the Best Specialists. Use your best talent for specialized sections of the Exhibit 300. Have your smartest, most articulate acquisition specialist provide the blueprint for your Acquisition Strategy. Your EA guru should be helping system managers map IT investments to business and service architecture. The same goes for all the other areas--risks, security, EVMS, E-Gov Strategy Reviews, etc.

Plug the Common Holes in Your 300s. Your agency probably has some weaknesses among the OMB's 10 scoring categories. Through collaboration and use of your best specialists, you should be able to upgrade your management of these categories on an agency-wide basis.

Develop a Model (Template) 300. OK, each project in your agency has a unique personality and different age, but they should look like they're related … at least first or second cousins. Ask your best specialists to work together to develop a model Exhibit 300 that generally reflects your agency's mission, management, and technology environment.

Train Your Individual Projects. Conduct workshops that give IT project teams hands-on experience in adapting the enterprise approach to unique requirements of the individual business case.

Complete and Evaluate Your Individual Business Cases. Quite a bit of refinement and polishing will still be needed for the individual business cases. This is where the year-long efforts of the Capital Planning and Investment Control (CPIC) process will pay off. The details and documentation will be highly useful in adapting the individual business cases.

Provide Follow-Up First Aid. You should run trial scores on all of your Exhibit 300s. Any that are at risk of being rejected or going on OMB's Watch List should be fixed immediately.

Designate Your OMB Response Team. The Office of Management and Budget could change guidelines for capital planning at the last minute, as it has done in some previous years. Be prepared by designating a response team who will take charge of the change and adjustment process.

Please remember that there are many other, longer-term issues which we have addressed in many other issues of our newsletter, such as articles in 2004: how OMB scores 300s, portfolios of Exhibit 300s, performance-based service contracting, EVMS, CPIC, and follow-through for Exhibit 300s.