Welcome, and thank you all for joining
us today to help usher in the "Next Generation
Government." I want to extend particular thanks to Senator
Burns, co-chairman of the Congressional Internet Caucus, for
joining me as a primary co-sponsor on this bill. As a matter of
fact, we’re lucky to have the other Caucus co-chairman,
Senator Leahy, as a co-sponsor, as well. The three of us and
nine other other colleagues have concluded that the virtual
realignment of government services and information is the best
way to achieve a more service-oriented, citizen-oriented
government.
Today, we’re introducing what I believe to be
ground-breaking legislation, the Electronic Government Act of
2001. The point of this proposal is to provide the leadership
and resources necessary to leverage the Internet and other
information technologies to create a more accountable, and
cost-effective government. If the federal government is to be a
positive presence in society, and best serve the people it
represents, it must aggressively harness these new technologies.
We don’t really have a choice in the matter. The people are
demanding the same 24-7 access to government information and
services now available to them from the private sector online.
And federal, state, and local governments are beginning to
respond. You can file your taxes online, renew your drivers
license, apply for college loans, and if you’re a business,
you can bid on government contracts and, in some cases, use the
Internet to get advice about regulatory requirements.
But, at this early stage, e-government is a loose_knit mix of
ideas, projects, and affiliations—often uncoordinated,
sometimes overlapping, and too frequently redundant in their
costs. In some cases, remarkable innovations are being
championed by visionary government employees, but too many other
efforts are hampered by traditional models of government
management. We must not end up taking the often confusing, and
ultimately inefficient, maze of government programs that now
exists and simply transferring it onto the Net.
What our bill tries to do is put information technology to
work to overcome arbitrary or jurisdictional boundaries so that
we can provide the public with seamless, secure online services.
We focus on delivering services and information to the citizen,
organized according to the citizen’s needs.
To do this, we will need leadership and coordination between
agency decision-makers. We are calling for a Federal Chief
Information Officer, to be located in the Office of Management
and Budget, and endowed with broad authority to lead
e_government efforts, working in conjunction with state and
local governments, the private and non-profit sectors, and the
public. The CIO will review agencies’ IT planning and
performance, ensure compliance with existing information
statutes, and address privacy and computer security issues.
The CIO also will oversee an E-Government Fund to promote
cross-agency projects that are absolutely necessary for the kind
of integrated service delivery that will truly transform the
government. We’re asking for $200 million a year, for three
years. Considering the government spends $40 billion
a year on information technology, $200 million is a modest
investment in efficiency.
We also want to build on the FirstGov.gov web site, launched
last year, so citizens can access their government through a
single, centralized portal. In those few instances where
agencies have
cooperated to create
integrated web sites - Students.gov is an example - browsers can
easily reach a realm of information and services. Our bill will
produce more integrated sites, linked to the centralized portal.
And we will create a directory of government web pages, so
citizens can find the help they need with a few clicks of the
mouse rather than with cumbersome searches that often produce
hundreds of thousands of results.
The Electronic Government Act of 2001 expands online access
to judicial information, establishes an online national library,
and promotes research into how information technologies can be
used to improve preparation for and response to natural
disasters. The bill requires regulatory agencies to follow in
the footsteps of the Department of Transportation, which has
placed its docketing system entirely on-line, so that anyone can
easily find the rule-making that interests them, review
comments, or file comments of their own from a home computer.
This is the way to encourage public participation in the
democratic process.
We know that savvy Internet users will never feel entirely
comfortable interacting with a virtual government unless their
personal information is kept private and secure. To address that
concern, we have added strong new protections requiring agencies
to complete detailed assessments of privacy considerations when
they purchase new information systems or launch new collections
of personal information.
Our bill is a work in progress. Already it reflects the
insights of many people and organizations, including those who
participated in the interactive web site launched by Senator
Thompson and me last year. We will continue to seek comments and
feedback, especially, I hope, from the Administration. And I
expect the bill will change as we work to achieve a broad
consensus.
Unlike too many other issues we work on, e-government is not
about partisan advantage. It’s about responding to the
remarkable opportunities available to us so that we can work to
form a more responsive government and a more perfect union. We
have only just scratched the surface with the Electronic
Government Act of 2001, but we are, at the very least,
establishing a process by which our government can begin to
transform itself by using information technology to interact
with its citizens. This is what we mean by "Next Generation
Government."
