The Foreign Service Journal, January 2003

12 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 3 …and E-Government for All? Interested in filing your federal income taxes online for free (and get- ting your refund twice as fast), or securing a 15-day extension with the click of a mouse? By January 2003, about 60 percent of U.S. citizens should be able to use EZ Tax to do just that, thanks to a milestone agreement the IRS reached with online software vendors to implement the project. EZ Tax is one of 24 high-payoff, government-wide “e-initiatives” iden- tified by President Bush in October 2001 for priority implementation in an effort to jump-start the e-government effort begun under the Clinton admin- istration. There are four more initia- tives in the “government-to-citizen” portfolio that range from making it easier to reserve campgrounds at national parks to finding federal bene- fits for which one might be eligible. Mark Forman, managing e-govern- ment strategy at the Office of Management and Budget ( www. whitehouse.gov/omb /), su mmed up the task: “The first phase is to get the information on the Web. That is the low-hanging fruit. It’s pretty easy to do. The second phase is the re-engi- neering necessary to streamline the process. That is harder and takes longer.” Federal information technol- ogy spending will exceed $48 billion in 2002 and $52 billion in 2003. The ulti- mate aim is to make it easy for citizens and businesses to interact with the government, eliminate redundant sys- tems and save taxpayer dollars. The Performance Institute ( www.performanceweb.org ), a public policy think tank, gives the Bush administration high marks for leadership on e-government, but cites important problem areas including cooperation between agencies, obtain- ing sufficient funding, and lack of user- friendliness in government Web sites. This is not news to the administra- tion’s e-government managers. Their latest report ( www.whitehouse.gov/ omb/inforeg/egovstrategy.pdf ) explains that during the 1990s, govern- ment agencies used IT to automate existing processes on an agency-by- agency basis, yielding over 35 million web pages online at more than 22,000 Web sites with little, if any, gain in pro- ductivity or citizen usability. The Bush administration’s E-Government Task Force found that there was significant redundancy, with multiple agencies performing each of 28 major functions or business lines separately. The result: a community attempting to obtain eco- nomic development grants, for exam- ple, might have to file over 1,000 forms at more than 250 federal bureaus, each form containing similar data — a wasteful and inefficient process. Lessons learned from this inform the current strategy, which is based on interagency collaboration on four port- folios: government-to-citizen pro- grams; government-to-business pro- grams; government-to-government programs; and, internal efficiency and effectiveness programs such as the e- training program for federal employ- ees already launched, and the payroll process consolidation program. An overarching e-authentication initiative is aimed at finding common solutions to the electronic signature needs and security of the e-programs. A similarly comprehensive e-govern- ment architecture project is working to develop a coherent federal enter- prise architecture and a core set of standardized technology models, and also conduct analysis to identify new opportunities for e-government initia- tives in the areas of homeland security, economic stimulus, social services and back-office operations. The strategy has already produced results. For instance, GovBenefits ( www.govbenefits.gov ) a llows citi- zens access to information on 133 ben- efit programs in 11 different agencies. It is a one-stop-shop, where citizens can determine whether or not they qualify for any government benefits and, if so, get help to apply. Researchers commended GovBenefits for staying up-to-date, an accomplish- C YBERNOTES I would like to strengthen embassies abroad, the ‘front-line troops’ in the diplomatic world. We will need more money, clearly, [to improve communications and working conditions at embassies]. I want to illuminate the whole subject in a way that it has not been illuminated in some time. For our Foreign Service people to be more effective, we need to have more going for them. — Senator Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Nov. 21, 2002, www.washingtonpost.com