STATEMENT OF
THE HONORABLE SALLY KATZEN
DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR MANAGEMENT
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,
INFORMATION, AND TECHNOLOGY
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
October 2, 2000
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee.
Thank you for inviting me here today to discuss the Federal
Government's new and most
comprehensive web portal - FirstGov. We appreciate your continued strong
support of agency
electronic government efforts. In addition, we welcome your interest in
FirstGov and the
opportunity to describe what we are trying to do and how we are progressing
on electronic
government.
E-Government
Before discussing the launch of FirstGov, it may be helpful to
place this project in the context of
the Administration's ongoing efforts in bringing electronic government to
the American people.
E-government involves access to government information and services 24
hours a day, 7 days a
week, in a way that is focused on the needs of our citizens and businesses.
E-Government relies
heavily on agency use of the Internet and other emerging technologies to
receive and deliver
information and services easily, quickly, efficiently, and inexpensively.
Indeed, the Administration has recognized the potential of the
Internet from the earliest days. To
plan for the use of information technology throughout the government, the
Administration
established the Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF) in 1993 to
coordinate the
Administration's efforts to improve service delivery to the public. I
chaired the committee on
information policy of the IITF. Much of that work formed the basis for our
e-government work
now. In July 1997, we published our principles for e-commerce, which
relied heavily on
industry self-regulation. Adherence to these principles has allowed the
Internet to flourish in a
manner that is generally free from government restrictions.
To accelerate and focus the Federal government's work, last
December the President
issued a Memorandum to the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies
regarding
Electronic Government. The Memorandum calls for a number of actions, such
as making
federal forms and transactions available online, ensuring privacy, and
providing access
for the disabled. Significantly, the first item in this Directive calls
for the establishment
of a "one-stop" gateway to government information available on the
Internet, organized
by the type of service or information that people are seeking rather than
by agency. I
will return to this in just a moment.
As DDM, I chair the President's Management Council (PMC), which
is comprised of the Chief
Operating Officers from the major Departments and agencies. The PMC
adopted "Promoting
Electronic Government" as one of its three goals for the year 2000 and it
has adopted priorities
that build upon the President's Memorandum. These include a one stop
gateway for government
information and services, the development of customer-centric web sites for
specific purposes
like exports and procurement, and the adoption of at least one electronic
government process in
every agency.
The Administration's Record
This Administration is making significant strides in
transforming our government to an
Electronic Government, using the President's directive and the PMC goals as
a framework.
Through these efforts, citizens can avoid traveling to government offices,
waiting in line, or
mailing paper forms. In fact, every Cabinet department is online and using
web sites to make
more information and services available to the American people at the click
of a mouse. There
are currently some 20,000 government web sites available for use. Citizens
are using web sites to
file their taxes with the IRS (www.irs.gov), apply for student
loans (www.students.gov), find new
jobs (www.workers.gov), and to compare their Medicare options
(www.medicare.gov). They're
tapping into the latest health research (www.health.gov), using
statistics from across the
government (www.fedstats.gov), browsing the vast collection of the
Library of Congress
(www.loc.gov), and following along with NASA's missions in outer
space (www.nasa.gov).
According to a recent Andersen Consulting study, the United States is the
leader in providing
government information electronically.
A key component of a successful transition to electronic
government is protecting the privacy of
personal information. Last spring, in response to questions and concerns
raised by the public
about federal agency use of personal information collected online, OMB
Director Jack Lew
issued Memorandum M-99-18 - Privacy Policies on Federal Web Sites.
In that memorandum,
OMB directed federal agencies to post privacy policies on key web pages
contained in agency
web sites. The executive branch agencies implemented the OMB memorandum
with great
success, with a virtually perfect record at agency principal web sites and
at major points of entry.
More recently, Director Lew issued Memorandum M-00-18 - Privacy
Policies and Data
Collection on Federal Web Sites, prohibiting the tracking of user
behavior across government
web sites and over time. FirstGov complies with both of these
memoranda.
As the President directed in his Executive Memoranda
commemorating the 10th anniversary of
the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26th of this year,
agencies have been asked to make
all programs offered on their Internet and Intranet sites accessible to
people with disabilities by
July 27, 2001. I am pleased to report that the FirstGov site has met
this deadline almost 9 months
early. FirstGov is an important tool for improving the accessibility of
electronic benefits and
services to people with disabilities.
A recent Hart-Teeter study conducted by the Council for
Excellence in Government demonstrates
that E-gov and efforts like FirstGov are what the public wants. The study
found that Americans
overwhelmingly support e-Government, viewing it as a way to get more
involved, be better
informed and hold government more accountable to its citizens. According
to the study, 66% of
the public has visited Government web sites with 71% rating Government
sites excellent or good.
A majority of Americans hold favorable views on every e-gov
function tested, giving the highest
marks to a broad selection of sites including those providing medical
information, Social Security
information, and on-line student loan application. In addition, as many of
our younger citizens
start interacting with the government they will only demand more access to
information and
services on-line.
FirstGov.Gov
As I mentioned earlier, the momentum for FirstGov was generated
by the President's Directive
on Electronic Government from last December, which gave the highest
priority to building online
information organized by topic not agency. The effort was referred to as
WebGov, managed by a
dedicated team at GSA who had been doing the spadework on the project for
several years. In
the very early spring, we took this effort to the President's Management
Council and it was given
enthusiastic support. Shortly thereafter we were approached by Internet
entrepreneur Eric
Brewer with the offer of a powerful search engine and database he would
develop and donate.
The search engine, which will be described more fully by GSA Administrator
David Barram, was
a major catalyst in bringing all government information together in a way
that the American
people can find, quickly and easily. As we finalized our plans we
discovered, as often happens in
the Internet world, the name was similar to other existing portals. We
chose the name FirstGov
to signify the citizens' first click to electronic government.
Last June, the President announced FirstGov in his first-ever
webcast address to the nation,
challenging government and industry to finish creating it within 90 days.
Exactly 90 days later --
in Internet time -- the President announced the launch of this site.
Building on President
Clinton's and Vice President Gore's efforts to expand citizen access to
online government,
FirstGov will cut red tape, make government more responsive to the needs of
citizens, and
expand opportunities for participation in our democracy.
Specifically, in a September 22 Internet address to the nation,
President Clinton announced the
launch of the first-ever U.S. Government web site that provides the public
with easy, one-stop
access to all federal government online information and services. This web
site - located at
www.firstgov.gov - provides a single
online information portal that connects Americans with
information and resources to one of the largest and most useful collection
of web pages in the
world. A breakthrough in one-stop shopping for government services,
FirstGov allows citizens
to conduct searches faster and more efficiently, by topic rather than by
agency, and to have easy
access to federal government information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
FirstGov allows users to search all 27 million Federal agency
web pages at one time. And it has
plenty of room to grow. It can search half a billion documents in less
than one-quarter of a
second and handle millions of searches a day. The Web Site also provides
access to the home
pages of major agencies and entities in all three branches of government, a
section that provides
topics of current interest to web users (e.g., a direct link to the Weather
Service during hurricane
season, to NASA during a shuttle launch, or to IRS during tax season), and
key sites that access
State and local government web pages. To increase efficiency, FirstGov
allows citizens to find
information intuitively -- by subject or by keyword.
The initial response to FirstGov has been largely favorable.
Initial estimates show that after the
first four days, about a quarter of a million people had visited the site.
More interestingly, web
traffic has increased for agencies with the launch of FirstGov: The
Department of Transportation
reported a large increase and the cross-agency site Disability.Gov reported
a nearly 3-fold
increase. In addition, the online customer feedback about FirstGov is
widely supportive: of
roughly 700 messages received by FirstGov in its first week, the vast
majority were both
supportive of the site and excited about the opportunity to help make the
site better through their
comments. Finally, to demonstrate the support for FirstGov among IT
professionals, at a
conference last week of State Chief Information Officers involving the
Federal CIO Council, the
States said they thought FirstGov was a tremendous advance and asked how
they could work
with the CIO council and be a part of it! In this way we can build on the
success at the Federal
level and move toward transformation that links all levels of
government.
The ability to find government information and services
intuitively and quickly is the
key to making electronic government succeed. It does not matter how many
or how
useful government on-line services are if they cannot be found is a
straightforward
manner. FirstGov is the initiative that helps to solve this problem. It
indexes these
efforts, currently found in many places across government, and provides
that intuitive
link.
FirstGov is a foundational element in our e-gov effort. Both
the Director of OMB and I have
given special attention to this project, and I sit on the governing board
of FirstGov. GSA
Administrator David Barram will give more details on FirstGov.
Where do we go from here?
FirstGov is a revolutionary step in the way that the government
provides information and
services. It provides easy and comprehensive access to all Federal online
information. A visitor
to a page that links to FirstGov need not know what agency provides student
loans to get
information on student loans; the search engine as well as the topic
directory can provide this.
And FirstGov partners may offer yet a third way to access the information
in a way that fits the
users needs. No other country in the world makes a comparable database
available to the public.
Having said that, we are not content with the status quo. But,
at the same time, I can't tell you
exactly how we will go forward. The search engine and online indexes will
become more useful
over time. The search engine will learn which pages are the most useful to
the citizens and
display them more readily. The topic index will grow and encompass those
sites most commonly
looked for and accessed by the public. Ultimately, as agencies put more
information online,
FirstGov will be the catalyst for additional agency and cross-agency
portals that continue to break
down the existing stovepipes and lead to a real transformation in the way
the government delivers
information and services. Most importantly, citizen feedback will lead our
efforts to make our
information and services more available online. The public will point our
way, and through their
direction we will give them a comprehensive and responsive electronic
government that works
better for the American people.
Thank you for listening and thank you for your support for our
efforts in this area. I look forward
to answering any questions.
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