As the federal CIO, Mark Forman often said that government needed to emulate business in its use of technology. Ending a self-imposed, seven-week silence since stepping down in mid-August, Forman last week said the government has surpassed most businesses in developing an enterprise architecture in order to simplify computing. "The federal government isn't two years behind business any more," says Forman, who has joined Cassatt Corp., an enterprise-software startup, as executive VP of worldwide services.

The federal government's efforts are on par with 70% to 80% of corporate IT organizations in deploying Web services, trailing only the 5% to 10% of top-tier IT users in U.S. business, Forman says. He cites the government geospatial portal, Geodata.gov, as a leading-edge example of Web services.

Forman also contends that the federal government is way ahead of most companies in implementing IT security. "The federal government has put in place a real, defined process that you find in only a few companies," he says. Most companies aren't annually analyzing gaps in security, Forman says.

The nation's first E-administrator sees Congress' failure to fully fund the E-government initiatives he championed as a blessing in disguise. Instead, Congress required agencies to finance these projects jointly. "One of the well-kept secrets on the E-government initiatives is that by not centralizing funding, Congress made it easier to drive cooperation among the agencies," he says. "You can't have any better tool to drive consolidation than people giving money to consolidate. That was helpful."

Soon after Forman's departure, administration chief technology officer Norman Lorentz resigned, as did several key E-government-initiative managers. Forman isn't worried about a brain drain: "I have a theory about Washington: People jump in to fill a vacuum."