E-Government

Introduction
Electronic Government (E-Government) is an evolving concept, meaning different things to different people. However, it has significant relevance to four important areas of governance: (1) delivery of services (government-to-citizen, or G2C); (2) providing information (also G2C); (3) facilitating the procurement of goods and services (government-to-business, or G2B, and business-to-government, or B2G); and (4) facilitating efficient exchanges within and between agencies (government-to-government, or G2G). For policymakers concerned about e-government, a central area of concern is developing a comprehensive but flexible strategy to coordinate the disparate e-government initiatives across the federal government.

The movement to put government online raises as many issues as it provides new opportunities. Some of these issues include, but are not limited to: security, privacy, management of governmental technology resources, accessibility of government services (including “digital divide” concerns as a result of a lack of skills or access to computers), and preservation of public information (maintaining comparable freedom of information procedures for digital documents as exist for paper documents). Although these issues are neither new nor unique to e-government, they do present the challenge of performing governance functions online without sacrificing the accountability of, or public access to, government that citizens have grown to expect. Some industry groups have also raised concerns about the U.S. government becoming a publicly funded market competitor through the provision of fee-for-services such as the U.S. Postal Service’s now-discontinued eBillPay service, which allowed consumers to schedule and make payments to creditors online.

Early Initiatives
E-government initiatives vary significantly in their breadth and depth from state to state and agency to agency. Perhaps one of the most well-known federal examples is the FirstGov website, which first went online on September 22, 2000. FirstGov is a web portal designed to serve as a single locus point for finding federal government information on the Internet. The FirstGov site also provides access to a variety of state and local government resources. Another example is the Grants.gov initiative,, which is designed to provide a single portal for all available federal grants, enabling users to search, download applications, and apply for grants online.

At the Department of Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) administers the Free File initiative, which has partnered with industry to provide free online tax preparation and electronic filing services for eligible taxpayers.

E-Government Task Force
Pursuant to the July 18, 2001, OMB Memorandum M-01-28, an E-Government Task Force was established to create a strategy for achieving the Bush Administration’s e-government goals. In doing so, the Task Force identified 23 interagency initiatives designed to better integrate agency operations and information technology investments. These initiatives, sometimes referred to as the Quicksilver projects, are grouped into four categories; government-to-citizen, government-to-government, government-to-business, and internal effectiveness and efficiency.

Examples of these initiatives include an e-authentication project led by the General Services Administration (GSA) to increase the use of digital signatures, the eligibility assistance online project (also referred to as GovBenefits.gov) led by the Department of Labor to create a common access point for information regarding government benefits available to citizens, and the Small Business Administration’s One-Stop Business Compliance project, being designed to help businesses navigate legal and regulatory requirements.

A 24th initiative, a government wide payroll process project, was subsequently added by the President’s Management Council. In 2002 the e-Clearance initiative, originally included as part of the Enterprise Human Resources Integration project, was established as a separate project, for a total of 25 initiatives. Since that time, the Bush Administration has reclassified the e-Authentication initiative as “a separate initiative that provides secure and robust authentication services to the 24 [i]nitiatives,” bringing the official tally again to 24 initiatives.

As the initial round of e-government projects continue to develop and become fully operational, OMB has focused attention on initiatives that consolidate information technology systems in nine functional areas, or Lines of Business (LoB). These include financial management, human resource management, grants management, case management, federal health architecture, information security, budget formulation and evaluation, geospatial systems, and information technology infrastructure. These initiatives were chosen, in part, because they represent core business functions common to many departments and agencies, and/or have the potential to reap significant efficiency and efficacy gains. These LoB initiatives are anticipated to create $5 billion in savings over 10 years.

E-Government Act of 2002
On December 17, 2002, President Bush signed the E-Government Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-347) into law. The law contains a variety of provisions related to federal government information technology management, information security, and the provision of services and information electronically. One of the most recognized provisions involves the creation of an Office of Electronic Government within OMB.

The Office is headed by an Administrator, who is responsible for carrying out a variety of information resources management (IRM) functions, as well as administering the interagency E-Government Fund provided for by the law.