E-Government

The Federal government is a large unwieldy beast with a vast number of federal agencies and offices. The degree to which an agency has effectively entered the Information era can vary significantly from one office to the next. Some websites are excellent and have revolutionized the way that the government operates; other offices have reluctantly entered the Information Age by hurling up a smattering of assorted information in a variety of disparate and useless ways.

The eGovernment Act of 2002 was passed in order to bring a degree of order to the cacophony through the establishment of the Office of Electronic Government, residing in the Office of Management and Budget in the White House. The eGovernment Act directs the Office of Electronic Government to

• Upgrade and standardize federal websites; share best practice, coordinate information policy, standards, protocols, procurement and funding.
• Annually report to Congress on agencies progress in implementing egovernment initiatives.
• Support central federal portals such as Firstgov.gov, regulations.gov, grants.gov and govbenefits.gov.
• Codifies (puts into law) support for the Federal CIO Council.
• Improve Federal privacy practices through the requirement of Privacy Impact Statements and the posting of privacy policies on federal websites (See Privacy and the Feds).

The eGovernment Act also delineates responsibilities to different federal entities such as FEDCIRC for network security.

• eGovernment Act
  • The E-Government Act of 2002
    •  P.L. 107-347 E-Government Act of 2002
• President's E Government Initiatives Website
• President Signs E-Government Act - Statement by the President
• EGov Act Summary
• EGov Strategy
• Federal CIO Council
• E-Government Strategy, Implementing the President’s Management Agenda for E-Government (907k)
• Senate Committee on Government Affairs: Outline of "E-Government Act of 2001"
• USDA eGovernment Newsletter: President Signs Egov Act of 2002
• USDA Powerpoint summary
• eGovernment Resource Center Australia on US eGovernment Act (large collection of articles re legislative history)

White House

• Information Policy, IT & E-Gov
• In addition, OMB's Memorandum , M-06-02, Improving Public Access to and Dissemination of Government Information and Using the Federal Enterprise Architecture Data Reference Model says: "when disseminating information to the public-at-large, publish your information directly to the Internet. This procedure exposes information to freely available and other search functions and adequately organizes and categorizes your information. This memorandum assumes that your robots.txt file is allowing search engines to crawl your site. If you are disallowing search engine crawlers, you are not exposing information to search engines, and therefore not complying with this guidance."
• Presidential Memo: Electronic Government (December 17, 1999)
• Privacy
• Streamline Authentication and Identity Management (July 3, 2003) (95k)
• Executive Memo M-00-13 Privacy Policies and Data Collection on Federal Web Sites June 22, 2000.
• M-99-18 Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: Privacy Policies on Federal Websites June 2, 1999
• Memoranda M-00-13 MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES SUBJECT: Privacy Policies and Data Collection on Federal Web Sites (June 22, 2000) ("The purpose of this memorandum is to remind you that each agency is required by law and policy to establish clear privacy policies for its web activities and to comply with those policies. ")
• CIRCULAR NO. A-130 MEMORANDUM FOR HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND ESTABLISHMENTS  SUBJECT: Management of Federal Information Resources (February 8, 1996 ) (This Circular establishes policy for the management of Federal information resources. Procedural and analytic guidelines for implementing specific aspects of these policies are included as appendices.) Directs agencies to "use electronic media and formats, including public networks, as appropriate and within budgetary constraint, in order to make government information more easily accessible and useful to the public)"
• EO 13011 Federal Information Technology, July 16, 1996

GovNet

Government Continues Building Private Net, IDG 11/28/01

US plan for secure internet 'flawed', BBC 10/18/01

'GovNet' idea gaining new momentum after Sept. 11 attacks, CW 10/12/01

White House Seeks Government Computer Network, AP 10/12/01