Citizen Web

Kudos for best practices, knocks for blurring the boundaries between government and industry

In late September, the White House launched FirstGov.gov, the official portal to 27 million federal agency Web pages in 20,000 Web sites, including all of the .gov and .mil domains. President Clinton envisions the supersite as "a breakthrough in one-stop shopping for government services" that will give citizens 2437 access to the feds.

However, less than two weeks after its debut, the site became the subject of congressional hearings that raise questions about its security and ties to corporate sponsors. Also, search engine experts have criticized FirstGov's FedSearch search engine directory structure, search functions, content coverage, and partner program.

The FirstGov portal interface closely resembles consumer portals such as Yahoo! and features links to other federal agency sites organized in a variety of topic categories, including Environment and Energy, Money and Taxes, and Science and Technology. The White House hopes surfing civilians will use FirstGov for tasks ranging from applying for student loans and tracking Social Security benefits to reserving campsites in National Parks, watching space shuttle take-offs, and conducting research at the Library of Congress.

About 250,000 people visited FirstGov.gov in the four days following its launch, according to Sally Katzen of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Eric Brewer, cofounder and Chief Scientist of Inktomi Corp., established the Federal Search Foundation to develop the FedSearch search engine technology for FirstGov. Inktomi and Sun Microsystems are supporting the foundation, which will operate FedSearch for two to three years; at that time the FedSearch knowledgebase and servers will be turned over to the government, which will then have to find a new search-engine contractor. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) currently has a $4 million, two-year contract with GRC International Inc. to operate and maintain FirstGov.gov.

FirstGov's public/private partnership is being credited with getting the portal online in only 90 days, a phenomenally short time for a government project, but analysts from watchdog groups testified at recent hearings about possible problems that might ensue from such industry-sponsored efforts to develop a better national information infrastructure.

In October, Patrice McDermott of OMB Watch spoke at a hearing conducted by the Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, entitled "FirstGov.gov: Is It a Good Idea?" In her testimony, McDermott praised the FirstGov concept, but said the federal portal has a long way to go in terms of guaranteeing security and user privacy, adding to its depth of content, and ensuring that vendors do not have too much control over search functions.

"There are significant policy issues created by FirstGov and its relationship with FedSearch," McDermott said. "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."

In related testimony, Mark Bohannon of the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) registered his concerns about FedSearch's exclusive relationship with FirstGov and the foundation's methods for obtaining and organizing information in the search indexes and signing up companies in the portal partner program.

"To become a 'certified partner' in the FirstGov system, a company or entity must successfully negotiate with both GSA and the FedSearch Foundation. At every crossroads in the 'FirstGov system', the FedSearch Foundation [has] a key role of implementation and interaction with third-party, private-sector partners," Bohannon said. "Questions remain as to whether a commercially desirable framework for partnering has been established."

Gartner Group CEO Michael Fleisher calls FirstGov a good start in crossing the "digital divide" between Americans who have access to technology and its benefits and those that lack such access. Fleisher also said that FirstGov is a prime example of best practices for Web site development and deployment. "I applaud the Firstgov initiative as an important first step toward realizing the incredible benefits that technology can bring to the relationship between our citizens and our government," Fleisher said. "There is always a tremendous temptation to overstudy and to overengineer Web solutions. The far better approach is to quickly get a site out to the users, and then to iteratively improve the site over time. This is the model that Firstgov has followed."

Claudia Willen