OMB Watch's letter to Sally Katzen of the Office of Management and Budget expresses disappointment in the mock-up of the FirstGov online portal to government information, and includes suggestions for improvement. The site falls far short of the objectives identified by the President: "to help our citizens gain one-stop access to existing Government information and services, and to provide better, more efficient, Government services and increased Government accountability to its citizens." July 24, 2000 Ms. Sally Katzen Counselor to the Director Office of Management and Budget 260 Old Executive Office Building Washington, D.C. 20503 Dear Sally: As you know OMB Watch has advocated for years for improved public access to government information, particularly for the tools to help locate and obtain information. That is why we were so pleased when the President issued two memoranda to federal agencies on December 17, 1999 designed to strengthen public access to federal government information and services. In particular we, along with the many public interest groups interested in public access, eagerly anticipated the development of a web service to "promote access to Government information organized not by agency, but by the type of service or information that people may be seeking." The President's memo also was specific: "the data should be identified and organized in a way that makes it easier for the public to find the information it seeks." The President followed the December action with a more recent announcement of a web portal, FirstGov, coupled with a search engine developed by Eric Brewer that promises to achieve the specific requirements in the December memo. On behalf of a number of organizations, we have been monitoring the exciting development of FirstGov and strongly support you in this effort. We recognize that the creation of FirstGov, especially with the speed with which it is being developed, will be a work requiring continual progress, that the first version will not be the last, and that the site will always be in search of perfection. Nonetheless, in reviewing the first public distribution of the mock-up of the portal <http://firstgov.gov>, we are greatly disappointed. Other than the Brewer search engine, the site falls far short of the objectives identified in the December memo and is not worthy of being called a portal, and is certainly not the tool described by the President "to help our citizens gain one-stop access to existing Government information and services, and to provide better, more efficient, Government services and increased Government accountability to its citizens." The next few months will determine FirstGov's legacy. We offer the following points in the hopes that they will help to make FirstGov a proud legacy.

• FirstGov does not present information by topic. The President's memo specifically requires that the information be available by "type of service or information that people may be seeking," not just by agency. The current mock-up comes nowhere near this objective. Some of the agencies provide web sites instructive on how to handle topics. For example, EPA and HUD provide several ways of finding information, including topic areas (see www.epa.gov and www.hud.gov). Such topics – and the taxonomy for each – should be developed by content experts familiar with that issue area. Additionally, FirstGov should provide a way to locate information relevant to specific geographic localities. Usage of own online database information service, RTK NET, reveals most people seek information about a particular city, zip code, region or state. The public should be able to type in their zip code and find out about toxic chemicals in their neighborhood, economic development opportunities, affordable housing, community technology centers, pending legal proceedings, crime and health statistics, the libraries within a 10-mile radius that provide government information, farm bureaus and extension services, and more.
• The current mock-up is not a portal or a useful one-stop. A useful portal, such as Yahoo, provides categories of information that users can obtain and a range of services (e.g., receive updates, customized views). At best this mock-up is a "click-through" service with very little insight from the public's perspective. The three general sites on the left -- Executive Branch, Legislative Branch, and Judiciary -- are so general and undifferentiated as to be virtually useless. It would be faster and more insightful for the public to link directly to the White House Gateway to Government site <http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/html/handbook.html> or Thomas <http://www.thomas.loc.gov>. (This White House site provides useful, value-added information, such as the summary of federal statistics.) We are curious where the link under Judiciary will go given that the new Supreme Court web site is not very complete. The Concierge "Bulletin Board" is little more than a hodgepodge of icons. Moreover, no indication has been give as to who decides what information or categories appear on the Bulletin Board? Some have argued that the information on agency web pages is already too heavily weighted toward public relations material, particularly with regard to press releases. Let's hope that FirstGov is more than agency press releases. While not everything can be done over the next three months, much can be. Staff should be exploring ways of aggregating information, based on surveys and focus groups, to make the site meaningful to users. New, promising services, such as the White House's summary of federal statistics, should be provided. These might include: ways of finding out about government regulations and paperwork; listings of availability and awards of government grants and contracts; identification of basic government documents and policies (e.g., Constitution, Declaration of Independence); a federal employee locator (for example, EPA maintains one) with telephone numbers, addresses, and email; links to local, state and international governments; links to the development of the proposed FCC 211 telephone service that provides information about services in localities in this country; and maps that provide a variety of government information (as described above). Additionally, FirstGov could be a vehicle for facilitating electronic requests for information that is not currently available through the search engine, and, as a last resort, a means for filing electronic FOIA requests. In its current mock-up, FirstGov does not hold a candle to GPO Access or Fed World, services that have not received the hype or resources that FirstGov has. Some may argue that the topics listed under GPO Access would need improvement if it were a comprehensive, government-wide portal. Even in its current version, though, it provides a more robust service that the public can rely on. If FirstGov does not dramatically change, we would recommend that you move the Brewer search engine to GPO Access and work with GPO to refine that site as a government portal.
• The Certified Partners should be removed from the front page. More than one-third of the screen is inappropriately taken by listing Certified Partners (CPs). If you feel compelled to push forward with the CP concept, then it should be no more than a single link on the home page to obtain the names of CPs. Otherwise, the list of CPs is likely to be so very large as to be overwhelming. (Will you list every library and nonprofit organization agreeing to your criteria?) We also think it a bad idea to be advertising other private sector sites on the FirstGov home page. The idea of FirstGov is to develop public name recognition so that the public knows to visit the site. We have other concerns about the Certified Partners program and related issues. What criteria will be established to select CPs? Will the government make efforts to reach out to nonprofits, libraries, and state and local governments to also be CPs? (We would urge you to partner, as the Census Bureau does, with nonprofit organizations to target FirstGov to specific subpopulations (e.g., rural communities, ethnic groups). What benefits do CPs enjoy that non-partnering search engines not enjoy? Will CPs obtain special access to government pages or only to the Brewer database? We would strongly urge against providing special access. In fact, when NTIS attempted to provide Northern Light with the ability to spider government web pages when other engines were not allowed to, a number of public interest groups objected and planners had to back off the proposal. If the latter, then does that mean the Brewer database is not public domain? Who then "owns" that database? These types of issues need to be discussed and resolved.
• Public comments are needed. We are pleased that FirstGov is proceeding apace. However, any web manager knows that users must be consulted when developing a site, especially a portal as important as one to all federal government information. This must be instituted immediately and in multiple ways, not just through a Federal Register notice. Ironically, even the slide presentation on FirstGov does not invite comment to the presentation provided. As an aside, it is disappointing that the criteria for a Certified Partner was announced for comment only through the Commerce Business Daily and with only a two-week notice, hardly a real effort to seek input.
• FirstGov should be more than a "click-through" service. FirstGov is an opportunity to provide a common look and feel to accessing government information. According to the slide presentation: "FirstGov will help you get started and be your refuge if you get lost." But it appears that FirstGov is nothing more than a single web page. Once you click an item from the FirstGov site (e.g., Executive branch), you are sent to another site. As a result, the public will have no "refuge" as the FirstGov interface and services will no longer be present. It is possible to add frames, but this may present general problems for users with slower machines and low-bandwidth. Similarly, it is unclear what the interface will be once a user gets a search request back from the Brewer search engine. Gathering government information through the FirstGov portal should keep you within the portal framework in the same way other portals, such as Yahoo or CNet, do. This does not mean that every agency web site needs to change. People will still search individual agency sites, which can continue as they have. Rather, this is an opportunity for the public to enter a one-stop service that makes finding information simpler. It requires building a comprehensive portal, not just a cover web page to access individual agencies.
• Online feedback is a good idea. We strongly encourage online feedback. In fact, some of the more successful web sites, such as Amazon.com and Zdnet.com, rely heavily on user feedback. The public should be able to let government know the utility and usability of information provided. In some cases user comments may help others make decisions. There should be an opportunity for users to comment on whether other user comments were helpful to them in making decisions, a model employed by web sites such as Amazon.com. The current feedback opportunity, listed in the mock-up, is not very useful. First, it is limited to commentary on what others have said about the Certified Partners, instead of providing an opportunity to post comments yourself. Second, even if the intent was to provide comments about the Certified Partners, it misses the point. The opportunity should be available to provide comments about the information that government is providing as well as the manner in which it is provided. Third, while it is important to get feedback on the home page, it is even more important to get commentary on the underlying information obtained in order to achieve the transparency and accountability described in the President's December memo.
• Privacy and other design criteria. The site should have a button to help the public identify the site's privacy and other operating policies. The privacy policy should be part of a larger set of design criteria to insure access through FirstGov for those who do not speak English (or have limited facility), or for those with disabilities, older computers, and various types of browsers.
• Why is the trademark symbol all over the home page? This "business" model seems out of place on a government portal. And the phrase, "your first click to digital government" hardly seems worth trade-marking.
• Plan for future costs. The current construct of FirstGov is not worthy of large expenditures. Students can develop the html coding within a very short time. However, if FirstGov is to be a robust portal growing over time, it will cost money and will require experimentation as well as deployment of tools and services. We believe that an agency, such as GSA, must put a line item in their budget request specific to maintain FirstGov. At the same time, we think a nonprofit organization should be established, possibly the Federal Search Foundation created by Brewer, that experiments with improved access to government information. For example, FirstGov does little to help the public reach databases in the government. The Brewer search engine will provide access to electronic documents and records if they are permitted to be spidered. (We assume that the indices will be made public but not the spidering algorithm.) But the public will still not have access to the databases, nor will the public know about government information that is not on agency web sites. (We would urge the home page to provide information about FirstGov to be clear what it will and will not be searching and how it will incorporate the z39.50 standard that is used in the Government Information Locator Service.) We think a nonprofit organization could experiment with providing an interface that reaches databases in multiple agencies to provide the public with one stop information. FirstGov should be striving for such goals. With resources, a research team could begin such experimentation. Since the government will procure services for providing e-government transactions, we would encourage government to require contractors to set aside a portion of funds to help fund this new nonprofit with core support of at least $5 million per year.

We hope our comments prove useful in strengthening FirstGov to live up to the potential described by President Clinton. If there are other ways we can be helpful, please let us know. Sincerely, Gary D. Bass Executive Director