Special NPTalk commentary on the launch of FirstGov Online Government and FirstGov: The Foundation Online government! Oh my! What's happening to the Internet?!? Well, considering the amount of federal government dollars and research which helped to create the Internet and many of the tools necessary to take advantage of the opportunities it offers, government has a legitimate interest, and obligation, to make more of itself available online. The notion of government information access and unimagined service delivery makes one realize just how far we have come in under a decade. The Web in its infancy was considered a top-down medium based solely on pushing information out through pages. To the degree a web-based entity had any interaction with its audience, it was based on one-way transactions of information and services, mainly "pushing" information to end-users or "consumers." Search engines, "cookies," and other information collection tools enabled information consumers to offer information in exchange for content or service delivery on the web. Still, end users were not directly interacting with information sources as much as they were accessing the content of entities with goods, services, or products to provide. The next phase of Web-based activity was predicated on connecting end users directly to the providers of online goods and information, but not just by providing an e-mail address you could click on to send a message to a webmaster or single-point-of-contact within an organization (usually the never-checked e-mail inbox that is a dumping ground for all unwanted messages) or maybe a message board or guestbook. End users started to crave personalization, faster access, and other demands on online services that dictated new rules of interaction, in effect forcing online organizations to decide how much of their traditional offline roles could be devoted to engaging users while trying to provide as comprehensive a range of services themselves. Something more substantive, some mechanism allowing end users to connect directly with the entities that served them for all level of interactions that would normally occur offline (complaints, help desk, administrative, oversight, etc) was demanded by Web users and necessary for online entities to expand their online presence. After all, users reasoned, direct transactions with entities they use is just as important as the existence of information sources, the content they provide, and the audiences they serve. This helps to instill a sense of trust, confidence, and willingness to revisit the online medium. That concept lies at the heart of something called "consumer-to-business" (or C-to-B, C:B, or C2B) electronic commerce models. While the consumer-to-business model is traditionally thought of in terms of how payments are generated by end users and distributed to the source of information, goods, and services, its significance is much larger. The same pipeline, mechanism, or channel through which payments are distributed also represent the means through which end users, clients, customers provide their voice in the development and delivery of goods in which they have either an interest or a stake, as opposed to passively receiving content or information from an online source or entity. Just because C2B is an e-commerce turn of phrase does not mean it only applies to business. The whole notion of electronic commerce-- conducting business transactions by means of electronic media and communication, in order to engage previously unreachable users while increasing efficiency and reducing costs-has literally informed a good number of non-business online efforts including government. Electronic government, however, presupposes an additional obligation that e-commerce does not, namely that the content provided is, more often than not, a "public good" produced by taxpayer dollars and (ideally) available to the public. E-government, when and if it works, can enhance access to and delivery of information and services to citizens, partners, employees, cross-agency, and other entities, and can lead to simple, clearly understood, and consistently implied standards regarding government information and services. So how do you go about implementing the best e-commerce principles-- increased efficiency, reduced costs, and meeting audience needs-- with respect to "e-government?" One could start with by assessing the state of online government activity. Earlier this month, a group of researchers, led by Darrell M. West, professor of political science and director of Brown University's Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions, released a study of federal and state websites in a report, "Assessing E-Government: The Internet, Democracy, and Service Delivery by State and Federal Governments." The researchers looked at 1,813 websites (1,716 state government websites, 36 federal government legislative and executive sites, and 61 federal court sites) for the quality and effectiveness of electronic government, and featured an e-mail survey of chief information officers in each state and 38 agencies. The good news? Of the chief information officers surveyed, 86% said e-government improved service delivery, 83% felt it increased efficiency, and 64% believed it reduced costs. In terms of responsiveness, a whopping 91% of government websites responded to an e-mail request for official office hours, with three-quarters of those sites responding within one business day. Now the bad news:

• only 5% of government websites have a security policy
• only 7% of government websites have a privacy policy
• only 15% government websites have disability access
• only 4% offer foreign language translation
• only 22% offer some means for conducting transactions with government (license renewal, tax payments, etc.) some sites present commercial advertising

The study found that the federal government had better information and service websites than the states overall. With respect to the states, the best predictor of high ranking in terms of "e-government" service was the size of its population. The states with smaller populations tend to lack resources to support the economies of scale to adopt online government services (it costs more to implement similar systems across smaller user bases than larger ones, where cost per user is less). Interestingly, at the federal level, judicial websites did worse than executive or legislative ones in terms of providing basic contact information for their agencies, or even links to other resources. The study, in general, points to a great need for consistency and standardization within and among government agencies from the national down to local level in order to make "e-government" a workable proposition. According to Jeremy Sharrard, author of a Forrester Research (http://www.forrester.com) report on electronic government, "e-government" will need to go through three stages: 2 years of experimentation, integration and use by the citizens, and a final phase of service delivery coordinated across government entities that are centered on customer/clients. At best, this is not likely to happen on the federal level until 2002 to 2005. Back in May 2000, an "online experiment" was launched to allow citizens to express their opinions regarding ways the federal government can provide improved content and more services via the Internet, initiated by United States Senators Fred Thompson (R-TN) and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), respectively the Chairman and Ranking Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. The effort was titled "e-Government: An Experiment in Interactive Legislation," and the idea is that the comments received would be used in legislation considered later this year. It is a bipartisan approach towards engaging citizen input about how government can take advantage of online resources to serve the public better, by taking comments online in a "virtual hearing," rather than simply introducing legislation that lays out ambiguous goals for government. Steve Clift has also circulated a notice on the Web-based Education Commission. The WBEC is a panel of 16 people appointed by the government looking for ways to engaged the education and Internet communities together in order to create online learning opportunities and environments. The Commission's final recommendations will be presented in November, but what sets this apart, according to Clift, is that this is one of the first commissions created by Congress to accept "e-testimony." What's more, there is a database of submitted testimony, searchable by name or type of organization or individual, as well as educational or policy interest. What if, however, you are more interested in access to government information at the federal level, particularly from the agencies. Hoe does one take advantage of the range of information sources? Maybe a search engine or portal? If so, how does one know how to effectively harness existing information portals to get to the content relevant to you. Steve M. Schneider, the editor of NetElection.org, and a research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Public Policy Center on leave from SUNY Institute of Technology at Utica/Rome (New York), wrote a useful essay on political portals for the May edition of iMP Magazine. Though Schneider is referring mostly to campaign related portals, he cites two particular problems endemic to online portals and information locator tools, "opacity" and "redlining." Opacity refers to the incomprehensible context in which content is presented. This is a problem of the way information is presented. Think of when you have conducted a search engine query through a portal (which in itself, draws content from multiple sources) you get a results page of nothing more than a laundry list of links, but you have no idea where the links point to, or why they are relevant. Would having those search results displayed in a format that categorized information by keywords, topics, and phrases that reflect concepts that are relevant or easier to understand given your needs? It is this consideration which Schneider calls transparency, and might be solved, he suggests, by clearly stating:

• who or what represents the ownership/management behind the portal
• the goal of the portal
• the editorial policy for what is included and why
• the breadth or range of information the portal purports to cover
• what information will be collected, how it will be gathered, for what purposes it will be used

Redlining, albeit a structural issue according to Schneider, is nonetheless a tricky one, as it reflects the willing or unconscious exclusion of information sources and content, thus reflect the editorial bias of the portal producer. This might be solved by creating a mechanism for input and feedback from the audience, instead of leaving the information and content decisions to the portal producers. Or, as Schneider suggests, portal developers should treat the underlying database architecture as a "public good", whose added value comes from what individual groups and actors, otherwise unable to afford or develop such a resource, bring in terms of knowledge or technical expertise. Opening the database architecture to outside groups might help to fill in the gaps on what might be missing. This is no easy task when you have, say roughly 100 million pages of online content spread across 25,000 unique websites, none of which are indexed across agencies in a consistent fashion, nor effectively organized or categorized in such a way that citizens can locate information specific to their needs from multiple sources as well as related information, or can search by commonly used keywords, or based on their geography; or that explains how to find and use the vast amount of information resources available, as well as providing a means for the feedback of end users to help inform efforts to bridge information gaps and improve service delivery. Oh if only such a tool could be built... Links Cited Assessing E-Government: The Internet, Democracy, and Service Delivery by State and Federal Governments Brown University's Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions http://www.insidepolitics.org/egovtreport00.html "e-Government: An Experiment inInteractive Legislation." http://cct.georgetown.edu/development/eGov Web-based Education Commission http//www.webcommision.org "Political Portals and Democracy: Threats and Promises" Steve M. Schneider iMP Magazine (May 2000) http://www.cisp.org/imp/may_2000/05_00schneider.htm What has some 100 million web pages spread across roughly 20,000 distinct entities, with no internally-developed, centralized, publicly accessible index or search engine? Yes, the federal government. It is too easy to stand back and say that the federal government in electronic form is a mess. One must look at the volume of information cranked out by government agencies, the varying demands and information needs of a pretty large online and offline user base. More significantly, the federal government could not decide, overnight, to throw all of its information up on the Web in an orderly fashion because for years, individual agencies have operated as "information silos" or "data warehouses," with many, sometimes conflicting, rules for gathering, dissemination, and sharing of data. Assume that getting even one "silo" is feasible. Just because you can make a silo available electronically does not mean that you have made that silo more accessible, more relevant, or even more useful to the folks that would normally utilize it, much less new audiences who one day find themselves needing access to that same information. As more folks learn to take advantage of online resources to learn more about the workings of government, to enhance and inform their daily routines and civic participation, they begin to crave more knowledge around the workings of government, which in turn begins to fuel a desire for accountability, performance measures, and better integration or collaboration among the government entities that affect them. Consider, for a moment, the fact that under the Electronic Freedom of Information Act (E-FOIA) (/files/info/EFOIA.html), federal agencies are required to make all official agency pronouncements available through the Internet (or some other electronic means) and providing reference guides for accessing information electronically. OMB Watch (shameless plug #1) in a report released January 4, 2000 titled "A People Armed?" (http://www.ombwatch.org/node/460) noted that out of 64 agencies studied for E-FOIA implementation, 11% had no useful E-FOIA presence, 89% had complied, to wildly varying degrees, with E-FOIA requirements, and, as of Nov. 24, 1999, not one agency fully complied with E-FOIA. The whole issue of US Federal "e-government" practice and standards received increased visibility in December 1999 when President Clinton issued two White House memoranda directed to the heads of executive branch departments and federal agencies. One focused on the use of information technology to improve our society (/files/info/1999/info_society-presmemo.html), the other dealt with electronic government (http://www.ombwatch.org/info/1999/e_gov-presmemo.html). The first memo not only provided 16 directives for improving public access to government information, but also encouraged the federal government to: a) adopt policies removing barriers to private sector investment in Internet applications b) explore partnerships with companies, State, local, and tribal governments, nonprofits, academic institutions and other entities c) look at innovative means for fostering a national discussion on the potential of the electronic society d) consider policies to promote electronic society, including national goals; The second memo outlined 11 directives, to be implemented in conjunction with private sector actors where appropriate, to help citizens gain "one-stop" access to existing government information and services, and to provide better, more efficient, government services and increased government accountability. The simple way to gauge the importance of these two directives is that without some way to navigate the mass of available government information, the public must rely on individual agency websites for access to government information. Keep in mind, however, that agencies have different data standards, different modes of operation, different mandates, and most importantly, varying track records with regards to accessibility, understandability, and ease of use. Searching for useful and necessary information in each agency's data warehouse or information silo is not only time consuming, it also may not yield all the information one seeks. The 100 million web pages we mentioned above? It includes the 40 million web pages that are currently available to an online search engine that can effectively spider and index them. That still leaves as many as 60 million web pages that would normally be found through existing search tools. This is because agencies and departments often elect to block search engine "spiders" and "bots" from accessing more than a few levels of depth within specific sites. Why? Sometimes web pages may feature a searchable database, whose results may yield dynamic content, or other information not easily accessible. More importantly, some sites may contain personal or private information-- including employee records, agency business, or confidential data like social security or tax information. All of this requires time and money. Consider the massive volume of federal government information available today compared to just under ten years ago. Then, factor the rate at which new content is produced and made available, in many cases, almost instantaneously. The constraints faced by government resources to think through, develop, test, and implement new approaches to expand and approve the range of interactions and services it offers, much less revamping what it currently offers to meet a huge range of audience demands simultaneously, is a nightmare. Just ask the federal government. It has been trying to implement a coordinated web-based government information portal, called WebGov for two years. The agency that has taken the lead on this effort is The United States General Services Administration (GSA) (http://www.gsa.gov). GSA is one of the three agencies in the federal government charged with central management duties. The other two are the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) (http://www.opm.gov) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb). GSA specifically oversees the buildings and workspaces, equipment and supplies, services, communications and information infrastructure, and other tools that allow Federal employees to do their work. GSA also develops, monitor, and evaluates government policies across agencies. (Coincidentally, GSA's Office of Governmentwide Policy has been renamed the Office of Electronic Commerce). WebGov-- despite the best intentions, numerous discussions, and hard work-- has been hampered by barriers of cost, technological logistics, and cultural issues peculiar to the federal government. Cost estimates alone ranged anywhere between US$5 to 20 million for the effort to be successfully developed, implemented, and maintained. If a group outside government were bold enough to attempt that which government itself has been unable to do, one would have to acknowledge the effort with bemusement, maybe a smirk, and possibly more than a little suspicion about the motivations and potential for success. So what if a citizen with both money and technical expertise stood up and just offered to volunteer their talents to helping the federal government work through these needs, out of a sense of repaying a debt, with no strings attached. Well, earlier this year, one man did just that. Eric Brewer is a University of California at Berkeley computer science professor, as well as the chief scientist and cofounder of a company called Inktomi. Inktomi (http://www.inktomi.com), may not be familiar to you, but if you have ever used one of the major portals or search engines, you have most likely encountered an Inktomi product. The company (along with competitors such as CacheFlow, AltaVista, and Akamai Technologies) produces search engines, information comparison and directory building tools, network-caching servers that boost the traffic flow of large networks and Internet Service Providers, and content delivery software that stores the content from multiple locations and distributes it to arrays of individual servers to reduce the amount of time it takes for end users to access it. Brewer's particular expertise includes building scalable portals, among other things. His efforts at Inktomi led to the development of search engine technologies that currently handle some 70-100 million requests from users each day, on machines that can conduct 200,000 simultaneous searches through an index of a half a billion documents in under 1/4th of a second. On June 24, 2000 Eric Brewer become more popular. That day, President Clinton, during his first-ever official webcast announced that Eric Brewer was donating his services to help develop a government information portal, dubbed FirstGov. This effort would, in effect, replace the GSA-led WebGov effort. The part that surprised everyone, however, was the timeline. FirstGov was slated to be launched to the public by September 30, 2000, roughly 90 days (!). FirstGov is being coordinated on the government side by a board of directors, consisting of 8 individuals from the President's Management Council and three federal chief information officers. The President's Management Council (PMC), by the way, is chaired by the Deputy Director for Management of OMB (the Office of Management and Budget), and is made up of the Chief Operating Officers (or the Deputy Secretaries) of the largest Federal departments and agencies. Brewer, upon the donation of his services, set up a nonprofit entity called the Fed-Search Foundation, to oversee the development and management of the actual search engine, database, and index of federal government web pages. It will technically have oversight of these tools for two years, after which time it will transfer ownership back to the federal government. In late August 2000, GSA announced that GRC International (a unit of AT&T), in partnership with AT&T, Autonomy, AppNet, Imagitas, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems would help build FirstGov. GRCI will provide the AT&T web hosting center via a Sun Microsystems platform, AppNet will develop the user interface, Autonomy will provide natural language search query and interest-oriented community tools, and Imagitas will provide assistance with content and strategic direction. GRCI will receive US$4.1 million over two years to build and integrate the systems underlying the portal. So an effort that originally took two years to conceive will be built in under three months, and will only cost the US government and the American people around US$5 million, a reduction of some US$15 million. So far so good, right? Well... Links Cited Electronic Freedom of Information Act (E-FOIA) /files/info/EFOIA.html "A People Armed?" OMB Watch Report (January 4, 2000) http://www.ombwatch.org/node/460 White House Memorandum (12/17/99) on Information Technology Improving Society /files/info/1999/info_society-presmemo.html White House Memorandum (12/17/99) on Electronic Government /files/info/1999/info_society-presmemo.html United States General Services Administration (GSA) http://www.gsa.gov Office of Personnel Management (OPM) http://www.opm.gov Office of Management and Budget (OMB) http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb Inktomi http://www.inktomi.com June 24, 2000 President Clinton webcast http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/6/26/6.text.1 (no spaces) FirstGov http://www.firstgov.gov GRC International http://www.grci.com AT&T http://www.att.com Autonomy http://www.autonomy.com AppNet http://www.appnet.com Imagitas http://www.imagitas.com Oracle http://www.oracle.com Sun Microsystems http://www.sun.com Online Government and FirstGov: A Critique We would like to say that FirstGov, the new federal government information portal developed, in large part, through a donation of services by Dr. Eric Brewer, co-founder and chief scientist of the portal and search-engine technology development company Inktomi, launched without any hitches, but there are a few major issues this effort raises. Not too long after the President's June 24 webcast announcing Dr. Brewer's FirstGov donation, OMB Watch, along with a few public interest groups, had an opportunity to attend a briefing by representatives of the FirstGov management and development team, to learn what FirstGov was all about. The session basically outlined the "business and operational model" for the portal. There were more than a few concerns raise d by the groups in attendance, not only around the preliminary design, but also around the set of relationships under which this potentially valuable tool would be developed. OMB Watch first previewed the FirstGov prototype site before meeting with Sally Katzen (Deputy Director for Management at OMB) and other representatives of the oversight team. OMB Watch drafted a 7/24/00 comment letter was drafted in response to both the preview and meeting, outlining specific concerns. There was, for example, no clear articulation of the multiple levels of audience needs and interests, a sense of who "owned" the data, what information sources would be utilized, what information would not be included, no context or information navigation tools, and no clear articulation of how or why this effort would differ from a number of existing commercial, not-for-profit, government, and collaborative federal online information locator tools. One particularly troublesome element was something called the "Certified Partners" directory. Though this was not clearly defined at the time, it implied some sort of corporate bias or involvement in the effort, which had originally been presented as gift from a concerned individual without corporate strings attached. As a follow-up, OMB Watch, along with a few public interest groups, met with Katzen and with Dave Barram (Administrator of GSA) and Bill Piatt (GSA Chief Information Officer). Work progressed on FirstGov's design. As stated before, the General Services Administration will manage the portal with monies from various agencies (at least initially), volunteer labor from government employees, and partnerships with six technology firms. The federal government "owns" the site, but the search engine database, including the log data of users visiting it the search engine, belongs to Inktomi. The Fed-Search Foundation will oversee only the development of the search engine. Inktomi will continue to own the database after the initial two-year run of FirstGov. After two years, the federal government could contract with Inktomi for services regarding the portal, which would allow access to the search engine database, but the government will not own it. OMB Watch had an additional follow-up meeting with the FirstGov planning team, and drafted a feedback letter, dated 8/10/00. This time the concern focused on how content would be presented to the end-users. The planners suggested that topic lists would help make the content more accessible, and that these lists would be developed and maintained as cross-agency efforts. This version of the presentation, moreover, allowed for the public to comment on design consideration as well. The question, however, was that if the agencies were making editorial decisions around the content categories without the input of the end-users, then how would the audience know how to locate relevant information. Government terminology and taxonomies in the most general sense are not easy to understand in all cases to people who interact with the government on a frequent basis, much less people who have never dealt with one specific agency. It is not just a question of presenting a listing of terms, agencies in many cases need to explain to users the context and relevance of information. The additional question was whether enough thought and attention had been given to the level of support, oversight, and quality control necessary to bring standardization and consistency to a topic scheme applicable across and within each agency given the current volume and state of information available. The other significant concern, aside from the fact that the workplan and previous design iterations are not kept up on the FirstGov site for public display to show what progress or changes have been made, centered on the protections for confidential or personal data on government pages Why should this be of concern? Mary Mosquera, in a 9/12/00 TechWeb News article, Feds Violate Commercial Site Privacy Rules," provides a convincing answer. She cites findings from a recently issued Government Accounting Office report, which states that most federal government websites do not follow the privacy policies and practices which have been set for commercial cites, including the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which launched an aggressive effort to make the online industry figure out a way to control how it uses personal information it collects. This means, for example, that privacy policies were not provided on the same pages as forms asking for personal information, if indeed there were any privacy policies available for the agencies. Now what is the GAO? This is the independent, nonpartisan agency that, by request of members of Congress, investigates and evaluates the programs and expenditures of the federal government. It also gives guidance to Congress and the heads of federal agencies, on how to make their programs and operations more effective. GAO findings are issued as legal opinions, and contain action steps and recommendations. Mosquera also cites another GAO report which found, strangely enough, that federal agencies, for the most part, do follow the Administration's own privacy requirements. The rub is that the Administration's privacy policies, set by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), are generally not as strict as the one's the FTC has laid out for online commercial entities. Additionally, the privacy act covering consumers' personal information has not been updated in some 25 years, ignoring the developments of minor things like the Internet and the Web. Especially nettlesome are the findings that up until this August, some federal agency sites, most notably the Office of Drug Control Policy, were actually using "cookies" to monitor user behavior online. Mosquera's piece also features a telling point, raised by Ari Schwartz, policy analyst with the Center for Democracy and Technology. Schwartz points out that, to the extent the federal government has addressed privacy concerns to date, they have been reactions to embarrassments and mistakes, rather than a coordinated, proactive effort to address significant infrastructure and capacity issues. Schwartz also points out that, "[u]nlike the private sector, all government systems of records are governed by a federal law." The reports cited can be found online:(free, through the Government Printing Office's GPOAccess service):

• Internet Privacy: Agencies' Efforts to Implement OMB's Privacy Policy Letter Report, 09/05/2000, GAO/GGD-00-191
• Information Security: Serious and Widespread Weaknesses Persist at Federal Agencies Letter Report, 09/06/2000, GAO/AIMD-00-295

We should mention, now, that the same date on which OMB Watch's second letter was sent, a nonprofit group called the Council for Excellence in Government convened a closed meeting of online content and information service companies. CEG, for reference, is a national nonpartisan membership group of people who are or were senior public-sector officials, all interested in improving government performance. The idea behind the meeting was to give the General Services Administration (GSA) a forum to present details of FirstGov. With some friendly persuasion, a few nonprofit groups (including OMB Watch) and some representatives of the press attended the meeting as well. According to more than one account, it was really an attempt to get companies to buy into the "Certified Partners" element of FirstGov, cited in the first OMB Watch letter. Now what is a "Certified Partner (CP)?" Well, it seems that in order to cover the costs of providing FirstGov as a "free" service to the public, the planning team wanted to sign up as many commercial partners as possible, who would provide direct access to the FirstGov search engine and database on their sites… for a fee. To qualify as a CP, and be eligible to stick the FirstGov certification on your site, you would have to agree to:

• provide the information as is, with no edits, qualifications, etc.
• provide free and uninterrupted access to FirstGov brand content
• clearly and consistently attribute information to the federal government
• not track individual user movements regarding FirstGov pages
• provide no advertisements on any page with FirstGov content
• not place FirstGov content anywhere near links, or position to, content considered offensive, discriminatory, or violating federal law

The total costs to an individual commercial CP would include a reported fee of US$25K to register, and a flat feea (1/10 cent) for each search conducted by users of that particular CP site. Those fees go to the Fed-Search Foundation, and not the federal government. As such, the fees do not cover FirstGov at all. The monies contributed to date for FirstGov have come, to date, from the agencies themselves. Let's just say that, from a number of differing accounts, the level of interest in the overall CP among potential partners ranged from amazement, curiosity, gall, confusion, and some serious head-scratching. Sounds like a bargain, no? One major point raised was whether or not nonprofit groups, libraries, and academic institutions, a number of which have been attempting for years to interact with and provide aces to an index of government information for years, could count as certified partners, and if they would have to pay fees for participation. As of this writing, outreach is planned to non-commercial entities and state and local governments, and may include the ability for nonprofits to set up free or low-cost access points, although the exact fee structure has not been set. This, of course, raises another point, most vocally stated by the Software and Information Industry Association, according to William Matthews, in a 9/18/00 Federal Computer Week article. SIIA, the trade association of the software and digital content industry, is concerned that FirstGov's free access to government information will undercut commercial efforts attempting to sell access to that information. GSA has, therefore, tried to promote FirstGov as a way to address this problem. But the terms outlined above are hard for some companies to accept. Matthews points out that online ads and tracking the online usage patterns are precisely how a number of companies make their money. So why would they agree to conditions that work at cross purposes with their business models? For more information on SIIA's concerns with FirstGov as originally conceived, check out their 7/20/00 reaction letter online. GSA has countered that for companies, especially those with large and sophisticated user bases, the volume of potential queries they bring to a FirstGov potentially outweigh the general public. As such, they should pay their fair share for utilization of the tool. For sake of balance, GSA states that the fees would be used to address the operating costs of the FirstGov portal, since it feels it is not the place of government to subsidize commercial or for-profit access to government information. As of this writing, the full fee schedule is still under internal consideration. We should also point out that the original notice for comments on the certified partners program was distributed only through the U.S. Department of Commerce's Commerce Business Daily (CBD), the daily publication of contracts awarded, U.S. government procurement opportunities, subcontracting leads, surplus property sales, and foreign business opportunities. A window of only two weeks was allowed for comments. If you are not prone to reading CBD, you would have missed it. An interesting footnote: Commerce Business Daily is produced online through the Government Printing Office's GPO Access service, which provides the public with free one-stop access to all three branches of government. GPO falls under the legislative branch of the federal government. While it was created some 140 years ago to meet the printing needs of Congress, it is the central information dissemination point for the government, covering Congress and 130 federal departments and agencies. GPO Access has the distinction of being not only one of the few government websites established by federal law, it is also one of the oldest, running continuously since 1994. Moreover, there have been other attempts, including a number of ongoing efforts, towards developing free, "one-stop" government information locator sites online, including:

• ezGov
• Federal Web Locator
• Federal Gateway
• FedWorld
• GILS (Global Information Locator Service)
• Gov-Bot
• GOVBOT
• GovConnect
• GovSpot
• InfoMine
• SearchGov

Oh, but if the fees were the only issues… Think about this: any website will be free to add a URL link to the FirstGov website on any page, and have that open in a separate browser window, without fear of losing eyeballs. What is the incentive to participate as a CP? Direct access to FirstGov's search engine index and database, compared to existing commercial search engines that can, at best, only snag some 25% of all federal online government information, seems like a good deal. Keep in mind, however, that the Fed-Search Foundation, set up by Dr. Brewer, will have control over the database and search engine.. The federal government, meanwhile, only has control over the FirstGov portal, and the content presented through its pages, not the search engine. This means that the index will not be treated as a "public good," is not in the public domain, and will not be made available via open source channels. Next, consider the uncertain definition of "free" and "uninterrupted" access? The design planning process has not taken into account the varying speeds and methods through which people have access to information currently. Online service providers can guarantee a quality level of access up to a point, especially if the services they provide do not lend themselves to broader notions of accessibility. GSA has said, however, that the burden for quality on the actual information still rests with each agency. But, if CPs are not allowed to "mark up" or "qualify" the information in some way that helps make it more easily understood by audiences, the goal of access is harder to achieve. And, just to make things more interesting regarding ads and government content, we noticed this little tidbit, courtesy of Dibya Sarkar's 9/21/00 article in Civic.Net, citing a telephone survey of 642 registered voters selected at random, conducted by eGovNet, an electronic government/advertising provider. The results are curious: some 56% would rather have ads on government pages than be charged usage fees for access, provided that advertising were "appropriate" to the content, and 60% felt that the presence of ads would not affect their willingness to access government services. By comparison, only 23% would be willing to pay access fees to government services. About 60% considered it okay for governments to use ads to lessen the amount of tax dollars needed to make services work. But 47% said governments should charge usage fees instead of paying for online services with tax dollars, while 28% said using tax dollars would be fine. Did we mention, by the way, that the federal government originally wanted to trademark the FirstGov name and brand. For the SIIA in particular, this raised concerns under the Paperwork Reduction Act, reflected in their 7/20/00 letter to the Office of the Chief Information Officer at the General Services Administration, cited previously. At issue is whether the Act restricts government agencies from restricting and/or regulation access to government information, including, "the use, resale, or redissemination of public information by the public." Moreover, the "branding", tied to the CP concept, would have possibly sent the message that any government information conveyed through a non-CP entity might be somehow, "less official." Government, in effect, would have been giving its imprimatur to select commercial entities. The specific issue is expected to be resolved soon. FirstGov is scheduled to debut for public view by the end of September, with plans to gather as much end-user input as possible Additional versions are planned for December 2000 and March 2001. Links Cited 7/24/00 OMB Watch Letter Regarding FirstGov http://www.ombwatch.org/node/404 8/10/00 OMB Watch on FirstGov http://www.ombwatch.org/node/402 Feds Violate Commercial Site Privacy Rules Mary Mosquera TechWeb News 9/12/00 http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW20000912S0004 Center for Democracy and Technology http://www.cdt.org Internet Privacy: Agencies' Efforts to ImplementOMB's Privacy Policy Letter Report, 09/05/2000, GAO/GGD-00-191 http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/useftp.cgi?IPaddress=162.140.64.21&filename=gg00191.txt&directory=/diskb/wais/data/gao (no spaces) Information Security: Serious and Widespread Weaknesses Persist at Federal Agencies Letter Report, 09/06/2000, GAO/AIMD-00-295 http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/useftp.cgi?IPaddress=162.140.64.21&filename=ai00295.txt&directory=/diskb/wais/data/gao (no spaces) Council for Excellence in Government (CEG) http://www.excelgov.org Software and Information Industry Association http://www.siia.net Federal Computer Week article (9/18/00) William Matthews http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0918/cov-1stgov-09-18-00.asp SIIA 7/20/00 FirstGov http://www.siia.net/sharedcontent/govt/issues/gip/RFC-FGCP.html U.S. Department of Commerce Commerce Business Daily (CBD) Notice on FirstGov Certified Partners http://frwebgate3.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=9126819497+0+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve [no spaces] GPO Access service http://www.access.gpo.gov ezGov http://www.ezgov.com/portal/index.jsp Federal Web Locator http://www.infoctr.edu/fwl Federal Gateway http://fedgate.org FedWorld http://www.fedworld.gov GILS (Global Information Locator Service) http://www.gils.net/index.html Gov-Bot http://ciir2.cs.umass.edu/Govbot GOVBOT http://www.nwbuildnet.com/nwbn/govbot.html GovConnect http://www.govconnect.com GovSpot http://www.governmentspot.com InfoMine http://infomine.ucr.edu/search/govpubsearch.phtml SearchGov http://www.searchgov.com Dibya Sarkar Civic.Net (9/21/00) http://www.fcw.com/civic/articles/2000/0918/web-govads-09-21-00.asp eGovNet Survey http://www.govads.com/polls.html Federal Paperwork Reduction Act http://www.rdc.noaa.gov/~pra/pralaw.htm