The FirstGov web portal is a major accomplishment and the Clinton Administration should be justifiably proud of it. At the same time, there are major policy issues created by FirstGov that have been left unattended. (Statement of Patrice McDermott, Senior Policy Analyst, OMB Watch before the Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology of the House Committee on Government Reform on FirstGov.) Statement of Patrice McDermott, Ph.D.Senior Policy AnalystOMB Watch Before the Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology of the House Committee on Government Reform On FirstGov October 2, 2000 Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on FirstGov, the federal government's new web portal. My name is Patrice McDermott, and I am a policy analyst at OMB Watch, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that works to encourage a more open, responsive, and accountable federal government. OMB Watch has not received any federal grants or contracts in the current and two preceding years, nor are we representing any entity today that has received such funds. For more than15 years OMB Watch has been calling for improved public access to government information. And we have encouraged the federal government to make use of the new electronic technologies to assist in the improved access. But, even though the Internet has grown increasingly ubiquitous, the Clinton Administration had done little to make access easy for the average citizen—until now. FirstGov is an enormously important first step—actually a giant leap—in harnessing newer information technologies to make the federal government more accessible to the public. We applaud the Administration for listening to and responding to our criticisms during the developmental stages of FirstGov. And we want to recognize that FirstGov is built on the significant groundwork that was undertaken for several years under the auspices of WebGov, with significant input from many people both inside and outside the government. While credit should be given to the President for his leadership and to his team for getting the task done, the web portal should be recognized as a first. Our testimony describes improvements that still need to be made to FirstGov. Moreover, we raise a number of important policy issues raised by FirstGov—and its relationship with the Federal Search Foundation— that have not been addressed and must be resolved. Our review of the site can be summarized as follows:

• The search engine is very fast and impressive, but to get search results relevant to the user request often requires significant work. We found the government information for which we were looking more easily through other search engines (and in some cases the information was not retrieved through FirstGov's search engine). The impressive aspects of the search engine will be diminished if relevance of search results is not improved.
• The directory of topics is also a great first step, but also needs significant work. We think government can learn much from the Open Democracy Project (www.dmoz.org) spearheaded by Netscape. The topics need refinement and procedures for being kept up-to-date.
• The privacy statement on FirstGov is very clear and useful. Unfortunately, however, when you click on some other government sites from FirstGov, cookies being set in a number of cases. Although OMB has issued guidelines, strong leadership is needed to help agencies uniformly comply with privacy protections.
• Opportunities for feedback from the public to comment on various aspects of obtaining government information are readily at hand. While these comments should prove very useful, there is still a need to conduct focus groups with different types of users to identify ways to improve the portal.
• The concept of Certified Partners was confusing in earlier presentations about FirstGov and is no clearer now that FirstGov is public. The web site provides virtually no information about Certified Partners. As the portal is now operational (i.e, the rush to get it done in 90 days is over), GSA should not rush into these partnerships without public debate on what is to be achieved and what a "partnership" truly entails.
• Other Issues. Information about FirstGov itself should be improved, which could be done through the FAQs. An example of useful information is how often spiders are set to crawl agency web sites. The frequency determines how current the information on FirstGov is at any point and very likely relates to a problem of "phantom URLs that we and others have encountered.

As stated above, the web portal is a major accomplishment and the Clinton Administration should be justifiably proud of it. At the same time, there are major policy issues created by FirstGov that have been left unattended. These include:

• Who "owns" the indexed database? FirstGov's search function is performed through a charitable organization called the Federal Search Foundation, commonly referred to as Fed-Search. Fed-Search has contracted with Inktomi to provide the search engine services, which includes a massive indexed database that makes it incredibly fast to retrieve search results. Can the government direct Fed-Search (and its partner Inktomi) to make the index database available to anyone it chooses? And if not, doesn't this give Inktomi a procurement advantage, even though GSA says otherwise? These questions have not been answered.
• Access to What? FirstGov still needs to address a number of access issues. For instance, it only searches on .gov and .mil domain extensions. It does not include an easy way to find current, timely information. Its searches do not capture the contents of important government databases, such as the Federal Register and WAIS databases. And it will not find nor notify users of the vast amount of government information that exists only in print or as records of the federal government. FirstGov should be an important part of a comprehensive effort to maximize access to government information to make it useful and meaningful.
• Permanent Public Access. The growth of the Internet and agency reliance on web pages for dissemination of information raise major concerns about the compliance with policies regarding preservation of documents and permanent public access. FirstGov's ability to retrieve pages highlights the problem of web pages that might be here today, but gone tomorrow—what we have called "phantom URLs." Is it possible that Fed-Search's indexed database can help facilitate permanent public access? Of course, technology does not solve policy failures.
• Privacy. FirstGov has the potential to lead to improved privacy on agency web sites. Fed-Search is conducting a scan of its indexed database to ensure that individual privacy is being protected, and the Administration should be praised for promoting this effort. It also highlights failure of ensuring compliance with the President's directives and OMB's guidelines on the use of cookies on executive branch web sites.
• Leadership and Coordination with Federal Agencies. There has been a startling lack of leadership, starting with OMB, on information access issues. The FirstGov team should coordinate and collaborate more closely with the federal agencies, including the Government Printing Office. And the Administration should address how FirstGov fits into its overall strategy for providing access to information, including its relationship to the Government Information Locator Service and E-FOIA (particularly its requirement that agencies make available inventories of their major information systems and descriptions of these and of their records locators).
• Linkage with State and Local Governments. The focus thus far has been primarily on partnering with the private sector (e.g. certified partners). Much more needs to be done to engage local and state governments.
• Adequate Funding. Congress and the President must recognize that agency dissemination activities, including FirstGov, require dedicated funding. Too often it has been an afterthought.

The remainder of this testimony provides details on the above summary. It is divided in two parts—user feedback of the web site, and policy concerns. FirstGov: A User's Perspective Search engine. The Fed-Search search engine is extremely quick and produces voluminous amounts of information. Its success in pulling back information for the user needs to be replicated in the relevancy of material that is returned. The value of the search engine rests on returning information that is useful to the user. To broaden our assessment of the relevancy of the searched, we asked colleagues about their experiences in using the search engine. One experienced librarian responded with the following reaction: "There are some elements of the organization of the site that may work well. However, as a heavy user of site search engines, I must say that I am not happy with the FirstGov search engine. I tried a variety of searches, and even though they show relevance ranking on the hit lists, I find that items listed at the top are seldom the items that should be there. For example, I searched for "Code of Federal Regulations" and went all the way to hit number 59 before finding the link that takes me to the main GPO Access CFR page. All the previous hits go to pages that refer me to the GPO Access site or give only excerpts of the CFR. GPO does have the appropriate meta data on the CFR page so that it should be given a high relevance ranking by a search engine configured properly." We had similar experiences in doing searches. We wanted to find out how to apply for Food Stamps, for example. So we typed in the term "food stamps" in the search engine. We received over 12,000 hits, and after going through a number of the results, gave up without getting the information. (The good news is that the directory of topics on FirstGov had relatively easy to find information about how to apply for Food Stamps. More on this below.) By comparison, we typed "food stamps" on the Google search engine and had roughly 158,000 hits. The second item returned had information about eligibility and how to apply. It is important to note that scrolling down the screen—under Related Links—got us more directly to the site about applying for this assistance. But the search result did not prioritize the relevant link either in position on the page or by highlighting it with color. A person should not have to be a skilled—or even experienced—searcher to obtain relevant results. We also did a search for "Toxics Release Inventory" and "TRI." The number one hit under both searches took us to older 1996 data. Even after going through several pages of search results, we never found the most recent data on toxic releases from the EPA site (although we did find a complex search tool at the National Library of Medicine buried low in the search results). We also searched on "Fed-Search" and "FirstGov." We found a number of references and links to slides of a PowerPoint presentation developed by GSA. But clicking on the links took us to a directory that did not exist any more. This is the phenomenon that we earlier called "phantom URLs." (More on this point under Permanent Public Access in the policy discussions below.) Within the first week of operation, the Fed-Search indexing database already appears out of date. In addition, the same items that were listed with 99% relevancy were also listed with 97%, 94%, and lower percentages. In fact, we found the same documents accounted for nearly 10% of the search results. We found the keyword search directions very helpful, particularly the search tips. (The Fed-Search web site indicates boolean searches are possible and described on the First-Gov site. But we couldn't find these instructions on FirstGov.) It appears that the search tips, however, are not yet implemented or that something is malfunctioning. For example, we searched the term Toxics Release Inventory with and without quotation marks around the terms. According to the search tips, putting quotation marks around the term means "you'll get results that contain only that exact phrasing. If you leave off the quotation marks, you'll get results that contain any of the words that you typed in." We received the same search results with and without quotation marks. We repeated the experiment with another search term and found no difference with using quotation marks. Some of the other search tips also did not work. The search engine developed by Fed-Search is a significant contribution and a great user tool. It is fast and impressive. Clearly, though, the search engine needs major improvements in ensuring that information retrieved is relevant to the user request. One key element is to develop an underlying thesaurus and taxonomy to insure that the user is getting closer to the information he or she wishes. Such tools should be linked to applications that help make searches context sensitive, such as through natural language or other applications. Directory. The directory of topics is very thoughtful and makes good use of the work that the agencies and GPO have been doing in making information accessible. Thus, for example, in our search of how to apply for Food Stamps described above, we clicked on Agriculture/Nutrition on the topic list, then clicked on "food." After scrolling down the screen to "Related Links," we found and clicked on the topic "Food Stamps" and were linked to a page identifying a toll-free phone number to call to get information about applying for Food Stamps. There was also a link to online information about eligibility and how to apply. Information on multiple ways to apply is a critical recognition of the fact that someone sitting in a public library finding this information might not want to—or be permitted to—transact an application online. Transacting Online. We found a "performance" section near the bottom of the FirstGov home page link to "Transacting Online" that was extremely useful. It provides access to selected government databases, including: Compare Nursing Homes—provides detailed data on Medicare and Medicaid certified nursing homes in the U.S.; Compare Medicare Health Plan Options—compares the premiums and benefits of Medicare health plans offered in geographic areas selected by zip code or state; Find Airlines with Best On-Time Records—compares quality of service offered by American air carriers; Check Airport Status—checks up-to-the-minute information for weather-related delays at forty major U.S. airports; How Clean is Your Neighborhood—allows you, through EPA's Envirofacts, to enter your zip code to get local information on drinking water, Superfund sites, air pollution, toxic releases, hazardous waste and water discharge permits; Check the Air Quality Where You Live—provides, through EPA's AIRNOW, real-time air pollution data in an understandable, visual format; and Check the Economic and Demographic Facts for Your County—provides economic and demographic information for any state or county in the United States. We would recommend that these great "performances" be expanded and elevated on the site so that users can easily spot the service. They might also be listed on the topics list. We would also suggest that the numbers be expanded and possibly linked to performance measures identified under the Government Performance and Results Act. GPRA requires performance objectives to be verified and validated. A great way to insure verification and validation is to make the data publicly accessible. The topic list on FirstGov is an incredibly important tool, but it need to evolve to have topics that are relevant to the types of searches and needs that users identify.There are many ways to do this, but we have been impressed with the model established by the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.orgwww.dmoz.com), which was spearheaded by Netscape and is used by such sites as HotBot, Lycos, and AltaVista. This project relies on more than 29,000 volunteer editors worldwide who have indexed more than 2 million sites in nearly 300,000 categories. It has produced well-organized lists of pertinent sites, with clear descriptions of each link. And, of course, the links must be kept up to date. The government, working in collaboration with state and local governments, could establish a tremendous base of "volunteer" editors to establish the same well-organized list of topics and links as Open Directory. This might be spearheaded by GSA along with government librarians who are already quite familiar with cataloging techniques. And those librarians who are part of the GPO's depository library system represent an additional pool of talent, knowledge and interest. Criteria for creating links is a further key step in improving the directory. The home page, for example, provides a link to information for government contracts. That link goes to Fed Biz Opps, even though CBDNet, operated by GPO, contains more information. Who decides what gets linked to? Additionally, some topics provide links to non-governmental sites. Who decides whether to permit such links? The improvement in the directory, along with insuring greater relevancy in search results I through the search engine, are the two most significant improvements that need to be made from a user's perspective. Privacy. FirstGov provides a very clear, simple to understand privacy statement. It is useful that the statement includes the notice that "Once you link to another site, you are subject to the privacy policy of the new site." Although the FirstGov privacy statement concludes with the warning about outside links, this warning only appears in small, easily missed print on returned-search pages. It would be useful for a interim page—commonly used in government agencies and across the Internet—to appear when a user links to a non-governmental or non-federal government site, saying that the user is now leaving the federal government pages, etc. Moreover, there needs to be strong, clear defined leadership to insure that intrusions on user privacy, such as tracking users through cookies, will not be tolerated on government sites, except in specifically defined—and agreed to—circumstances. However, some government sites returned on FirstGov search results set (or attempted to set) cookies. These sites included: pesticide data, Medicare nursing home comparisons, an army site that lists groups; a child statistics site; and a Bureau of Labor statistics site. Given the diversity of these sites, this problem may prove to be widespread and would seem to indicate a failure in compliance with the President's directives and OMB guidelines. Feedback. FirstGov's efforts to obtain user feedback on a variety of issues are laudable (although we have heard some user complaints about the levels of pages they felt they had to go through). We hope the President's Management Council has a process in place for reviewing feedback and incorporating useful comments, and for sharing them with the relevant agencies. FirstGov Certified Partners. The concept of Certified Partners was presented in a July 17th GSA PowerPoint presentation (see Attachment A), describing a vision of the web portal, posted on the FirstGov web site. The vision for Certified Partners was that they "will provide familiar as well as innovative approaches to finding federal information. With access to the entire Fed-Search index in the Back Room, these partners can focus on tailoring the presentation of federal information to specific needs of their users." GSA goes on to say: "Private company portals may use the FirstGov brand in exchange for meeting certain conditions. These portals will innovate to offer the best search environment to their customers. Conditions (abbreviated description): 1. INTEGRITY: must use the government information "as is" 2. FREE ACCESS: must provide uninterrupted free access 3. PRIVACY: must not track visitor's movement to or through 4. NO ADVERTSISING (SIC): no banner ads; some institutional 5. POSITIONING: not associate with inappropriate content 6. ATTRIBUTION: must attribute to U.S. Government 7. ACCESSIBLE: must comply with Section 508" The current FirstGov site provides virtually no information on how this concept has evolved, except to say it now includes nonprofits and academic institutions, along with commercial entities. The web site descriptions of the Certified Partners is as follows: "Making government easier and more accessible is at the heart of what FirstGov aspires to achieve. This will be best accomplished by the public sector and other organizations, who also wish to promote and accelerate electronic government. We expect partners to include the private sector, academia and non-profit organizations. If you are interested in applying for certification or would like more information on how to become an online FirstGov Certified Partner, email us at firstgov.partners@gsa.gov." There have been discussions that Certified Partners will need to establish a license with Fed-Search to use the indexed database that is the basis for FirstGov's search engine. What this license entails (e.g., the cost, access rights, etc.) has not been clear – and it raises a number of policy questions (see below) about who owns the indexed database. The Certified Partner concept needs greater scrutiny, clarity, and public debate. Until this has been achieved it should not be pursued. Other Points About the Web Site. Currency of Information Posted. The site provides little information about FirstGov itself. For example, how often are spiders set to crawl agency web sites? This is essential information for the public because it relates to the currency of the information available through FirstGov. For example, we searched for "poverty data" on September 26, the day the Census Bureau released 1999 poverty and household income data, and the following day, September 27. In neither search were we able to find the new poverty data (although we were able to find historical poverty data). By comparison, a private sector service—FedBuzz—which has launched GovWire had a link to the Census Bureau press release describing the data and providing links to the reports. We also searched for "poverty data" on Google and the first item returned was the Census Bureau's site with a link to the 1999 data. In other words, the information was on the Census Bureau web site in a timely manner, but FirstGov did not capture it. And it is likely that the public would not know to go to that agency's site to get the information. (Some of the problem may relate to the algorithms used in the search engine, but it is likely that time sensitive information is not getting indexed.) The Browser Back Button. No matter how good FirstGov is, there will likely be some "sleuthing" involved in finding things in government. This means that the user is likely to click on a search result from FirstGov which, in turn, will require clicking on additional links. For example, we clicked on the topic "How Clean is Your Neighborhood" under the performance section described above. By the time we completed the searches on the EPA site, we had to click the back button on the browser more than a dozen times to get back to FirstGov to do an additional search. This was not only annoying, it was time consuming. We would recommend that when you leave the FirstGov web site a new browser window be opened so that the user can easily get back to the FirstGov site. Policy Concerns 1. Who "owns" the indexed database? Dr. Eric Brewer deserves credit for stepping up and providing the momentum, skills, and resources to help make FirstGov a reality. He has provided a real service and contribution to this country. At the same time, this wonderful offering has presented a series of policy questions that have not been adequately addressed. As we understand it, Dr. Brewer has established the Federal Search Foundation, commonly called Fed-Search, as a charitable organization. He has stated repeatedly that the intent is to create the search engine, maintain it for a period of time, and transfer responsibility to the federal government. The Fed-Search web site and the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between GSA (for FirstGov) and Fed-Search indicate that this transfer of responsibility should occur within three years. GSA has taken steps to help Fed-Search set spiders to crawl every publicly available web page in the federal government. Other attempts to crawl agency web sites to this level are blocked by agencies for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the burden imposed on machine resources. Fed-Search has put the information from its crawlers into a massive database and indexed it so that search results can be obtained with incredible speed. This database is clearly a value-added service. This arrangement raises several policy concerns. First, is it now the government's policy to let anyone who wants to spider every federal agency web document do so? Will GSA help other entities get through agency blocks? Or does Fed-Search have a special relationship? If so, on what basis does Fed-Search have such a relationship? And what are the implications? A second set of policy questions relate to who owns FirstGov? This seems easy to resolve. Everything on FirstGov is public domain, free, and accessible because it is owned by the federal government. However, a portion of the FirstGov site does not quite fit this model: the indexed database provided by Fed-Search, which is maintained by Inktomi. The indexing arrangements in that database are not public information; rather, those algorithms are central to the business operations of Inktomi. This would suggest that the Fed-Search database is owned by Fed-Search (with a close relationship to Inktomi). GSA has obtained the services of GRC, Inc. through a two-year procurement to establish and maintain the FirstGov web site. GRC and its partners are not responsible for the search engine; Fed-Search is. Fed-Search has contracted with Inktomi to provide the search-engine services. Although Dr. Brewer is a co-founder and chief scientist at Inktomi—as well as the founder of the Federal Search Foundation— the Fed-Search web site states: "In the memorandum of understanding between Fed-Search and the U.S. General Services Adminstration (GSA,) it is explicitly provided that Inktomi will get no business advantage from the work it is doing for Fed-Search. Specifically, Inktomi will get no advantage in the procurement competition GSA will run to find a company to succeed Fed-Search in providing a search engine for the FirstGov.gov site." However, the MOU adds: "It is the parties' intent and expectation that nothing in this MOU shall preclude either Inktomi... from competing in the successor procurement." The MOU stipulates that if Inktomi "or some other party operating under license from Inktomi" wins the award, all services "will remain intact and connected to Inktomi." If someone else wins the award, "the connection to Inktomi will be disconnected and the servers will be purged of software and data prior to donation to GSA." Can the government tell Fed-Search that it wants anyone to have access to the indexed database, such as Certified Partners or others? Can the government make the indexed database public domain and open-source? More directly, can the GRC contractor or one of its partners expert on improving search relevancy, such as Autonomy, be given access to the database to improve the search mechanism? Who has the authority over the database, GSA or Fed-Search? This problem could more easily be resolved had GSA procured the services of a company—such as Fed-Search, Inktomi, or Google—to create a public domain indexed database. As a public service, GSA would spider agencies regularly to keep the database up-to-date. This would negate the necessity of Certified Partners since anyone, including FirstGov, could use the indexed database. This public domain model has the added advantage of reducing stress on agency machines as there would be no need to crawl agency sites. Instead, the information could be obtained through the main indexed database at GSA. This was not, however, the path chosen, so the policy questions must be confronted and resolved. We strongly urge this public domain model be incorporated into the successor version of the search engine and FirstGov. Third, notwithstanding the statement that Inktomi will get no advantage in GSA procurement competition, won't it clearly have an advantage? If the indexed database is in an Inktomi proprietary system, doesn't this give them an edge? GSA said at the press conference launching FirstGov that moving from one indexing system to another is a non-problem, but the technology experts with whom we have spoken do not concur. Moreover, if Certified Partners create a licensing arrangement through Fed-Search for use of this proprietary database, doesn't that give them a market advantage? Finally, Fed-Search offers federal agencies free direct access to the indexed database. But the agency must first be approved by FirstGov and then agree to a "Mutual Confidentiality Agreement" with Inktomi before Fed-Search will help them. Doesn't that help migrate the Inktomi proprietary system throughout government? A cynic might argue that the donation of the search engine to FirstGov is a smart marketing ploy by Inktomi to grab a huge potential market. But we have met Dr. Brewer and know that is not his intent. He is making an honest philanthropic contribution to the government with the hopes of improving public access to government information. Yet unless these issues get resolved his good intent may led to a bad outcome. These issues need to be resolved in a manner that assures that there is no violation of the Paperwork Reduction Act and its requirement for a diversity of sources. The resolution must also be responsive to the philanthropic endeavor provided by Dr. Brewer. 2. Access to What? FirstGov has made great strides in making millions of web pages publicly accessible. But as the Fed-Search web site notes, FirstGov does not address access to information that is not on web sites already. FirstGov also only searches on .gov and .mil domain extensions. Searches conducted through FirstGov will not, for the most part, find print publications of the federal government—unless they have been catalogued under GPO's Superintendent of Documents system or those rare cases that have had GILS (Government Information Locator Service) records created. As OMB has neither obliged agencies to comply with their obligations to make publications part of GPO's depository library system nor obliged (or assisted) them to comply with the GILS requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act, much government information of importance and use to users will not be identified through FirstGov. Even for the information it searches, FirstGov does not provide an easy and sure way to find current information (see the poverty data example above). It would be helpful for FirstGov to include a search of agency press releases or a topic for current agency releases. If this proves too daunting, GSA could contract with an existing service to add the FirstGov web site. And FirstGov does not address access to databases in our government, although it may provide a link to the availability of certain data. This means that searches on FirstGov do not capture information found in the Federal Register, for example. Information stored in WAIS databases, such as some of the information housed at GPO, will not be accessible to FirstGov searches, but will be through searches on GPO Access. But most users would not know that. A comprehensive look is needed at how to maximize access to government information—both paper and electronic, publication and record of government activity—and a plan for achieving meaningful access needs development. It certainly would be helpful for FirstGov to provide new, innovative services, such as electronic request forms for information identified by but not accessible through FirstGov. FirstGov should also alert users to the possible existence of government records pertinent to their interests. This awareness on the part of the public may require government to begin to take governmentwide electronic records management seriously and to begin to consider how to un-stovepipe records identification so that something like an electronic Freedom of Information request—that did not require the user at least initially to know in which agency relevant records might have been created—might be a possibility. Ideally, of course, FOIA requests will truly become a last resort. As a minimal first step, agencies should be strongly urged to comply with the requirements of the E-FOIA, particularly its requirement that agencies make available inventories of their major information systems and descriptions of these and of their records locators. While improved coordination within and across the federal government and modest expenditures could resolve some of this, a much bigger issue is at stake: how to improve access to electronic information, particularly databases, in our government. FirstGov plays an important role in helping to direct people to such services as EPA's Envirofacts so that they can conduct searches about toxic chemicals in their communities. But FirstGov would be far more useful and powerful if searches on key governmental databases could be done directly from the FirstGov site and cut across multiple agency databases. The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) on August 31st released its report "Transforming Access To Government Through Information Technology" which highlights findings and recommendations for both improving public access to Federal information resources and simplifying internal and external government transactions. A key PITAC finding is that "major technological barriers prevent citizens from easily accessing government information resources that are vital to their well being. Today government information is often unavailable, inadequate, out of date, and needlessly complicated." Regarding FirstGov, they note that the currently envisioned project "does not provide for information integration or federation, nor does it require standardization among agencies." "Firstgov.gov should focus efforts on government-specific capabilities such as transaction support, metadata creation, and comprehensive searchable catalogs of information and services." More broadly, FirstGov presents a new opportunity to get a crosscutting look at issues. FirstGov plays an important role in helping to direct people to such services as EPA's Envirofacts so that they can conduct searches about toxic chemicals in their communities. But FirstGov would be far more useful and powerful if searches on key governmental databases could be done directly from the FirstGov site and cut across multiple agency databases. Ideally, by typing in your zip code on the FirstGov site, the user could select types of information they are interested in and then map it. The data used in the mapping might be housed at EPA, OSHA, HUD, and other agencies. Clearly, this type of effort will not happen overnight and cannot happen without strong leadership. It requires experimentation with distributed databases; it assumes that regulated entities will be assigned identification numbers to designate corporate ownership and individual facilities (similar to our tax ID numbers); it assumes certain standards will be set; and it assumes coordination and collaboration among the agencies. None of this, though, can be done without leadership. The problem is that there no plan or discussion of a plan to develop an approach to maximize public access. Part of the problem is lack of leadership, discussed below. 3. Permanent Public Access. Agencies across all three branches of government have discovered that the Internet is a cost-effective means of making current information products and services more readily available to the public. FirstGov promises to fulfill one of the three key challenges of the rapidly changing e-government world by helping citizens locate the government information they need to start up a new business, to get important health information, or to research environmental laws over a particular time period. However, two critically important digital challenges remain unresolved: continuous, long-term access to this digital government information accessible on an estimated 20,000 agency web sites, and its preservation. The federal government is responsible for permanent public access and preservation of its electronic information. Government information is part of our nation's heritage and history. It documents the rights of our citizenry, tracks the activities, decisions and responsibilities of our government, and provides the means for government accountability. Unfortunately, as we transition to a more electronic government, agencies are failing to plan for the complete life cycle of their digital information—from its creation to provision, in the case of government records for their orderly and documented disposal, and in the case of publications their permanent preservation and provision for ongoing access. Few agencies understand the concept of permanent public access, that the digital information posted to their website today that is of long-term value must remain available to the public and must be preserved. Users of government information often revisit an agency website where they have bookmarked a URL, only to discover that the digital information or data they may have used just a few months ago has disappeared. In some instances, the user may be lucky and can find the same information in a print document, perhaps at a local depository library. But very often it disappears for good because it was produced and disseminated only in a digital format, and the agency—or just as likely, the congressional committee or the court—has decided that the information is no longer of value to the public. We suffer today from a lack of government information policy, guidelines or standards even at the agency level, not to mention across all three branches of government, that will ensure permanent public access to web-based government information. The lack of standards causes problems for current access, as well as for preservation and permanent public access. These important concepts must be addressed and should be part of every agency's overall information life cycle management system. The advent of FirstGov will likely highlight these unresolved challenges and lay them exposed, as users more easily find the government information they need on an agency website only to return at a later date to discover that it has disappeared. Indeed, as we have documented above, it is already occurring. The ensuing frustration may even unleash public complaints directed at agencies that fail to provide continuous and permanent access to a particular information product or service. The fact that this Administration over a 90-day period has produced the new FirstGov service is a big step in the right direction and gives us hope that there will follow a substantial effort towards resolving the digital dilemmas of permanent public access and preservation. We're at risk of losing our national heritage, as countless valuable publications have disappeared already off agency, congressional and court web sites. Our government must find the means, particularly now with development of FirstGov, to ensure that the digital information the public locates today remains continuously available to present-day users and will be preserved for and accessible to future generations. 4. Privacy. On September 20, a few days before FirstGov was unveiled, the Privacy Subcommittee of the Federal CIO Council sent a warning to agencies to be sure that none of the web sites being indexed by Fed-Search contain sensitive information about individuals that raise privacy concerns. The MOU between GSA and Fed-Search also emphasizes the importance of privacy protections. Although Fed-Search is not responsible for any violations of privacy rights, it has agreed to do an active scan of the indexed database to ensure that individual privacy is being protected. We applaud the Administration for this effort. Additionally, it is very important for the Administration to enforce a policy of not setting cookies, except in specially defined cases. The fact that we found a number of cookies being set on a small random sample may indicate a larger problem. 5. Policy Leadership. Our hope is that FirstGov will renew and propel government initiative in setting policies, procedures, and standards governing the posting of public information to agency web sites. Such policies as exist, while they may be commendable, have not been evaluated, updated, or enforced. Agencies are often left without the resources or guidance to handle public access issues, but many have simply not placed a priority on public access. The heart of the problem, however, rests with a lack of leadership, starting with OMB. The FirstGov team was under enormous pressure to develop the portal within 90 days. As a result, some important steps may have been missed. As the project moves forward, though, it would be helpful to have the FirstGov team coordinate and collaborate more closely with the federal agencies, including the Government Printing Office. Improved coordination and collaboration will make it easier to pursue the policy leadership that is needed. For example, the Administration should be looking at how FirstGov should relate to the Government Information Locator Service. Is the Administration committed to GILS, even with the advent of FirstGov? If so, should the Fed-Search indexed database help to create GILS records for the agencies? As noted above, the possibilities that FirstGov creates in relation to E-FOIA need to be explored and agencies need to be strongly urged to comply with the requirements of the E-FOIA amendments. 6. Linkage with State and Local Governments. Considerable energy has been placed on partnerships with the private sector (e.g., Certified Partners). We would encourage the President's Management Council and GSA to shift their energies to identify ways of improving linkages with state and local governments. FirstGov takes a first step in this direction by providing links to other sites that emphasize state and local linkages. But more needs to be done. Currently, FirstGov does only a mediocre job of providing state and local government information. For example, we searched for a county with a web site and never found it. 7. Funding. It is very important that Congress begin to recognize that federal agency dissemination activities, particularly through the Internet, require dedicated funding. Public access is not something agencies can do simply as an afterthought—too much is at stake. The President should be including line items for public access in every agency budget—perhaps part of what agencies collect in the fulfillment of FOIA requests could be maintained by the agency, or go into a fund, earmarked for public access—and ensure that adequate resources are available for fully developing and maintaining FirstGov. Of course, with public funding comes accountability. We also encourage Congress to consider whether the Paperwork Reduction Act should be modified to authorize FirstGov and to identify how it should relate to other agencies and to other initiatives, such as GILS. Conclusion Our critique of FirstGov should not diminish this very important first step. The creation of a government web portal—an easy to use one-stop—is an essential component of democracy in the electronic age. The very fact that we are describing ways of improving the service is a testimony to its initial success. Having said this, however, it is essential that FirstGov rapidly work on improving the relevancy of search results, and launch a more thoughtful approach to establishing topics and keeping them up-to-date. Our greatest criticism is the lack of policy leadership on public access issues. There are significant policy issues created by FirstGov and its relationship with Fed-Search. Moreover, FirstGov exposes a number of gaping policy problems dealing with what content is made available to the public, how web pages and other electronic documents are permanently accessed and preserved, and how to improve coordination with local and state governments, as well as federal agencies. We would like to see OMB or another office take the leadership responsibility that has been missing and move the government forward to strong, meaningful and permanent public access to government information.