{"id":13005,"date":"2018-10-15T20:48:26","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T20:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/uncategorized\/2018\/10\/15\/how-this-omb-official-thinks-government-can-leverage-differences-with-business\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T04:38:50","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T04:38:50","slug":"how-this-omb-official-thinks-government-can-leverage-differences-with-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/management\/2018\/10\/15\/how-this-omb-official-thinks-government-can-leverage-differences-with-business\/","title":{"rendered":"How this OMB official thinks government can leverage differences with business"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There are a lot of ways in which the federal government operates very differently than the private sector, but there are enough similarities that government can learn from the foundations of business change, according to the Office of Management and Budget\u2019s deputy director for management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret Weichert, who spoke Oct. 15 at the ACT-IAC Imagine Nation ELC 2018 conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, said that when she moved from the private sector into government, she had to contend with new financing structures and understandings of digital terminology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have real challenges in modernizing IT, particularly because capital allocation doesn\u2019t work the same way that I\u2019m used to in the private sector. In the private sector the chief executive puts out a series of priorities, even if they\u2019re in boring areas like IT, and then the capital flows behind those priorities. That\u2019s not how it works in the government,\u201d said Weichert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the framers of the Constitution and the creators of the checks and balances really anticipated the amount of overhead that would be involved in mission delivery 240 years in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parts of government that have checks on each other, such as Congress\u2019s oversight of the Executive Branch, also have differing definitions of important components of modernization, which makes conversations about the future of government modernization even more complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\t