Obama seeks smarter, more innovative government

David Jackson | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- President Obama said Monday he told his staff to continue efforts to develop a "smarter" and "more innovative" government, using new technology to deliver better services and save money.

"We've made some good progress on all fronts," Obama said in remarks at the White House. "But we need to do more."

Obama said he has assigned new budget director Sylvia Mathews Burwell to head up the continuation of an effort made in his first term to modernize government.

Speaking after a Cabinet meeting, Obama cited three goals: Better and faster delivery of government services, reducing waste and fraud, and providing more and better government data to help business owners solve problems and hire more people.

"We, the people, realize this government belongs to us," Obama said. "It's up to each and every one of us to make it work better."

Congress can help, Obama said, by giving him more authority to re-organize and streamline executive branch agencies.

Obama complained that lawmakers have passed "a lot of legislation that has poorly designed some of our agencies and forces some of our folks to engage in bureaucratic hoop-jumping, instead of just going ahead and focusing on mission and delivering good service to our citizens."