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OMB DDM Ueland: ‘The time for action is now’

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2 months ago

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The Office of Management and Budget is readying a new President’s Management Agenda. While the timeline for release and the specifics are still to be determined, Eric Ueland, the deputy director for management at OMB, was clear on the PMA’s theme.

“The time for action is now for the federal government,” Ueland said yesterday during the Government Efficiency Summit sponsored by Government Executive. “We in the Trump administration need to deliver the change the President demands. You’ve seen what the President wants to change in his executive orders, his budget, his work to right size and reorganize departments and agencies. You’ve seen it in his appointments of Russ Vought and Dan Bishop to run OMB, neither of whom are wall flowers when it comes to driving purposeful change. You’ll see it in the forthcoming President’s Management Agenda, new executive orders, actions by secretaries and agency heads and certainly how we handle budget negotiations this fall.”

Ueland said his office is working to develop the PMA, conferring with agencies and getting feedback to help focus in on what are going to be key priorities on behalf of the President.

“We will have an announcement in due course,” he said.

While details of the PMA will be forthcoming, Ueland signaled a few areas of focus for OMB.

He laid out four priorities:

  • The reorganization and reform of the federal government.
  • Fixing procurement.
  • Restoring the Made in America effort
  • The smart use of technology in the 21st Century

Eric Ueland is the deputy director for management at OMB. (Photo: Jason Miller/FNN).

“[The President] wants action and he expects results, and because the time for talking is over and the time for action is now, we’re working hard to deliver every single day and sometimes well into the night,” Ueland said. “Too often in the past, the ‘M’ in OMB stood for mumble, muffle and muddle. Under President Trump and Director Vought, it now stands for action. We’re now the office for action and budget, not the office of inertia and budget, and ladies and gentlemen, watch us act.”

The reorganization and reform of the government is well underway with agencies reducing the size of their workforces and the consolidation or elimination of agencies or offices.

“Unlike his predecessors, President Trump came to town actually with a plan to address [the hiring, size, efficiency and accountability of the federal workforce] using every tool available to him. The President and his administration have eliminated hundreds of thousands of nonessential positions across all agencies and departments. We have new performance guidelines in place for employees, for accountability, delivering efficiency and achieving priorities, including a new schedule of policy career and extending suitability from pre-hire to post-hire,” he said. “When we hire into the federal government, we are putting merit first. We want to streamline hiring to 80 days from first offer to first sign on. We’ll get there by ending outdated processes and tearing down barriers blocking our nation’s best from joining the federal workforce dedicated to one mission: making America great again. And as we reduce and refocus the workforce, we need to right size the federal footprint too.”

Ueland said one key piece of the reform and reorganization effort is consolidating and modernizing federal human resources systems. He said agencies spend at least $2 billion a year to maintain legacy and fragmented systems.

“It’s a patchwork [of systems]. All of them are from 20 to 50 years old. They need a boatload of federal and commercial software products to operate, and are more and more fragile and subject to hacking — or even worse — every single day,” he said. “With our partners at the Office of Personnel Management, we’re going to fix that. Under OMB Senior Financial Management Leader Steven Billy, we’ve empowered departments to organize themselves free of special interest diktats and long expired bureaucratic empires that were ripe for dismantling.”

OPM has tried two times in the last three months to award a contract for a new HR system, only to bring in the General Services Administration for the third attempt.

43 federal buildings sold

Another piece of the reform and reorganization agenda is the selling off of federal buildings.

Acting GSA Administrator Stephen Ehikian said at the event that the government has sold 43 buildings since January.

“The story there is, it’s not the proceeds from the sales are great, but we have a lot of deferred maintenance. If you own a house or a condo, you know if your roof is leaking, the plumbing is broken, the electricity, it doesn’t get better over time if you don’t fix it. That’s kind of been the problem, 10 years ago deferred maintenance was like $5 billion across the portfolio. Now it’s $20 [billion] and I think that’s probably conservative,” he said. “We sold [43] buildings so far, that’s been $200 million in proceeds. The story there is also, we unloaded $200 million deferred liabilities.”

Ueland said the Trump administration isn’t going to hold off for years while Congress decides whether to fund building upgrades.

“Instead, the day we close the building, we’ll slap a for sale sign on it, as is, all legal buyers welcome. No reasonable offer refused because the time for talking is over. The time for action is now,” he said.

Another area OMB is pushing for action on is modernizing technology. Starting with reducing the number of federal websites. Ueland said in January OMB determined agencies hosted 7,000 websites, each with their own rules and own operations.

“We’re going to fix that. We’ve already identified and are fully underway, reducing the number of federal websites by 1,000 to bring the overall count down to 6,000. This 15% reduction is just a first step. We’ll continue to consolidate websites so when Americans use the web to find what they need, it’s going to be easier and simpler and much more direct,” he said.

Improve CIO effectiveness

Another area OMB will focus on is making agency chief information officers more effective and organized.

Ueland said many agency CIOs don’t have a common view of their “value proposition” and the best way for them to work inside their departments and across the federal enterprise.

“They barely even coordinate well with each other. They don’t share common missions, best practices or even technology solutions. This has to stop,” he said. “The federal government has spent too much taxpayer money on information technology to have spent too little time ensuring better results. OMB is going to break down barriers, ensure integration, and drive for outcomes to lend value to agencies and departments and ultimately to taxpayers. Otherwise, CIOs will end up as just another back office function where you think you go to find a replacement charger cord, complain about your failed efforts to connect with Wi-Fi and demand the latest handheld which, oh, by the way, will take way too long to procure. So we’re going to fix all that, because the time for talking is over. The time for action is now.”

Ueland added that one big question the Federal CIO Greg Barbaccia and his team are trying to figure out is the best way to organize and remove redundancies across the community.

“OMB is making sure that the authorities, both inside the department and across the entire federal government, are much clearer, much crisper, much better aligned and have quantifiable, measurable outcomes, so that when a department turns to a CIO, the CIO is actually able to deliver, and a secretary or director knows that with confidence, this can actually get done,” he said.

The post OMB DDM Ueland: ‘The time for action is now’ first appeared on Federal News Network.

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Politics

President Trump Taps Dr. Ben Carson for New Role — A HUGE Win for America First Agenda

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9 hours ago

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September 25, 2025

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Dr. Ben Carson is the newest member of the Trump administration.

On Wednesday, former Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, was sworn in as the national adviser for nutrition, health, and housing at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins shared that Carson’s role will be to oversee Trump’s new Big Beautiful Bill law, which aims to ensure Americans’ quality of life, from nutrition to stable housing.

After being sworn in, Carson shared, “Today, too many Americans are suffering from the effects of poor nutrition. Through common-sense policymaking, we have an opportunity to give our most vulnerable families the tools they need to flourish.”

Table of Contents

WATCH:

Per USDA:

Today, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced that Dr. Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., M.D., was sworn in as the National Advisor for Nutrition, Health, and Housing at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

“There is no one more qualified than Dr. Carson to advise on policies that improve Americans’ everyday quality of life, from nutrition to healthcare quality to ensuring families have access to safe and stable housing,” said Secretary Rollins.

“With six in ten Americans living with at least one chronic disease, and rural communities facing unique challenges with respect to adequate housing, Dr. Carson’s insight and experience is critical. Dr. Carson will be crucial to implementing the rural health investment provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill and advise on America First polices related to nutrition, health, and housing.

“As the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the first Trump Administration, Dr. Carson worked to expand opportunity and strengthen communities, and we are honored to welcome him to the second Trump Administration to help lead our efforts here at USDA to Make America Healthy Again and ensure rural America continues to prosper.”

“Today, too many Americans are suffering from the effects of poor nutrition. Through common-sense policymaking, we have an opportunity to give our most vulnerable families the tools they need to flourish,” said Dr. Ben Carson. “I am honored to work with Secretary Rollins on these important initiatives to help fulfill President Trump’s vision for a healthier, stronger America.”

On Sunday, Dr. Carson was one of the many speakers at the memorial service of the late TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk.

During the memorial service, Carson highlighted that Kirk was shot at 12:24 p.m. and then continued to share the Bible verse John 12:24, which reads, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

WATCH:

The post President Trump Taps Dr. Ben Carson for New Role — A HUGE Win for America First Agenda appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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LEAKED MEMO: Deep State Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia Claim There Isn’t Enough Evidence to Convict Comey Amid Reports of Imminent Indictment

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9 hours ago

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September 25, 2025

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On Wednesday evening, disgruntled officials in the Eastern District of Virginia leaked contents of a memo explaining why charges should not be brought against James Comey.

As reported earlier, former FBI Director James Comey is expected to be indicted in the Eastern District of Virginia in the next few days.

Comey will reportedly be charged for lying to Congress in a 2020 testimony about whether he authorized leaks to the media.

Officials in the Eastern District of Virginia are still fighting to stop Comey from being charged after Trump fired US Attorney Erik Siebert.

President Trump last week fired Erik Siebert as the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia because he refused to bring charges against Letitia James, Comey, Schiff and others.

On Saturday evening, President Trump announced that he had appointed Lindsey Halligan – his personal attorney who defended him against the Mar-a-Lago raid – as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Now, with just days to go before the statute of limitations runs out to charge Comey for lying during a September 30, 2020 testimony, Lindsey Halligan is reportedly gearing up to indict Comey.

Prosecutors reportedly gave newly sworn-in Halligan a memo defending James Comey and explaining why charges should not brought against the fired FBI Director.

Per MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian:

Two sources familiar with the matter tell me prosecutors in the EDVA US attorney‘s office presented newly sworn US attorney Lindsey Halligan with a memo explaining why charges should not be brought against James Comey, because there isn’t enough evidence to establish probable cause a crime was committed, let alone enough to convince a jury to convict him.

Justice Department guidelines say a case should not be brought unless prosecutors believe it’s more likely than not that they can win a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.

The post LEAKED MEMO: Deep State Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia Claim There Isn’t Enough Evidence to Convict Comey Amid Reports of Imminent Indictment appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Nearly 8 in 10 Voters Say the United States is in Political Crisis After the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

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9 hours ago

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September 25, 2025

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Nearly eight in ten voters believe that the United States is in a political crisis in the wake of the assassination of conservative icon Charlie Kirk.

According to a Quinnipiac University national poll of registered voters released on Wednesday, a massive 93 percent of Democrats, 84 percent of independents, and 60 percent of Republicans said the nation is in a political crisis.

“The Kirk assassination lays bare raw, bipartisan concerns about where the country is headed,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said of the poll results.

Quinnipiac reports:

Seventy-one percent of voters think politically motivated violence in the United States today is a very serious problem, 22 percent think it is a somewhat serious problem, 3 percent think it is a not so serious problem, and 1 percent think it is not a problem at all.

This is a jump from Quinnipiac University’s June 26 poll when 54 percent thought politically motivated violence in the United States today was a very serious problem, 37 percent thought it was a somewhat serious problem, 6 percent thought it was a not so serious problem, and 2 percent thought it was not a problem at all.

Nearly 6 in 10 voters (58 percent) think it will not be possible to lower the temperature on political rhetoric and speech in the United States, while 34 percent think it will be possible.

Over half, 54 percent, of voters believe the US will see increased political violence over the next few years. Another 27 percent said they think it will stay “about the same,” while just 14 percent believe it will ease.

A 53 percent majority also said they are “pessimistic about freedom of speech being protected in the United States.”

Surprisingly, a 53 percent majority also believes the current system of democracy is not working.

“From a perceived assault on freedom of speech to the fragility of the democracy, a shudder of concern and pessimism rattles a broad swath of the electorate. Nearly 80 percent of registered voters feel they are witnessing a political crisis, seven in ten say political violence is a very serious problem, and a majority say this discord won’t go away anytime soon,” Malloy added.

The vast majority, 82 percent, said the way that people discuss politics is contributing to the violence.

“When asked if political discourse is contributing to violence, a rare meeting of the minds…Republicans, Democrats, and independents in equal numbers say yes, it is,” Malloy said.

The survey was conducted from September 18 to 21 among 1,276 registered voters with a margin of error of +/- 3.3 percentage points.

The post Nearly 8 in 10 Voters Say the United States is in Political Crisis After the Assassination of Charlie Kirk appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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