According to a press release, the Committee on House Administration has adopted new rules that "permit Members to post content on outside websites so long as the content is for 'official purposes'...."

On the one hand, this is a welcome relief from the rules the House was using, which seemed more appropriate for the nineteenth century than the twenty-first.

On the other hand, it will it make the job of identifying, authenticating, and preserving official government information that much more difficult.

John Wonderlich reports that the new rules say that Members of the House may post "official content" outside of .gov:

In addition to their official (house.gov) Web site, a Member may maintain another Web site(s), channel(s) or otherwise post material on third-party Web sites.

With official government information migrating to YouTube and other dot-coms and without deposit of official government information in depository libraries, even web harvesting projects will have little hope of being comprehensive.

Sunlight Labs is posting the new economic bill at PublicMarkup.org.

• Senate Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008

Gabriela Schneider of the Sunlight Foundation says:

In order to facilitate a conversation about the specifics of the Senate's new proposed bailout legislation (included within a 451-page document filled with additional provisions), we're parsing the bill's text, and have completed the first part, "Division A: the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008," posted on PublicMarkup.org at http://www.publicmarkup.org/bill/senate-emergency-economic-stabilization... for your review and commentary.

And the PublicMarkup site says:

Unfortunately, because Congress has yet to enter the 21st century by publishing legislative data -- instead of PDF files of bills -- we cannot present the entire bill section by section, for you to review and comment on. (However, if you notice, the file name on the top of the PDF they published shows that the bill originally was an XML file.)

SEC Seeks More Transparent Disclosure For Investors, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, press release 2008-227, Sept. 25, 2008.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it will hold a roundtable on October 8 to discuss ways to modernize its disclosure system to give investors more useful and timely information for investment decision-making....

"Sunlight has long been the best disinfectant to prevent problems in our markets. The more direct sunlight we can shine on company disclosure documents to extract the information that investors most want and need to make financial decisions, the more honest our markets will be and the stronger investor confidence will be," said Dr. William D. Lutz, Director of the 21st Century Disclosure Initiative.

Thanks and a tip of the hat to J.H. Snider who says, "The SEC’s disclosure technology may already be the best of any agency in the Federal government.... Nevertheless, given the recent financial meltdown, it looks like it may continue to break new ground.

Wall Street Loses, Google Gains in Government, by Anne Laurent NextGov, September 30, 2008.

Despite the bailout blow-out, my mind has kept wandering all day to a Washington Post story about Google's new office, of all things. Finally, Bob Gourley, former chief technology officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, helped me understand why.

Laurent says that government agencies won't be spending on IT in the near future because, increasingly, IT is becoming a utility that can be outsourced and that there is already evidence that governments may outsource to Google.

Agencies already are moving. The Post highlights the District of Columbia, where CTO Vivek Kundra has employees using Google's spreadsheets, email, videos, maps, word processing and a wiki. Alabama has won many plaudits and imitators with its amazing mash-up of Google Maps, Virtual Alabama.

She links to these interesting stories, among others:

• Wall Street Crisis, Enterprise Technology and Cloud Computing by Bob Gourley
• The End of Corporate Computing, By Nicholas G. Carr
• Google Goes to Washington, Gearing Up to Put Its Stamp on Government by Kim Hart, Washington Post, September 29, 2008; D07

Yesterday, after the House defeated the economic "bailout" bill, citizens swamped their representatives with e-mail and attempted to reach web sites hosted by house.gov to get more information. The result? "Millions of individuals seeking information about the forsaken legislation have slowed its 10 servers to a crawl." (Servers buckle as Congress rejects $700bn Wall Street bailout By Austin Modine, The Register, 9/30/2008.)

The response? House limits constituent e-mails to prevent crash, By Jordy Yager, The Hill, 09/30/08

Still No Directory of Federal Websites, E-Gov Act Ignored.   By Coby Logen, .gov Watch. November 05. 2007

How many government websites are there? How many HHS or DOJ sites are there? You and I have no way to know. American taxpayers cannot even know how many public websites their government is funding. By law, we should—but the system is broken.

The E-Government Act of 2002 set a deadline of two years to develop a "public domain directory of public Federal Government websites" (Section 207(f)(3)). But this directory still does not exist 5 years later.

Where are those rules? Be careful where you search to be sure you have found the correct and complete source.  While there are some kinds of information (e.g., phone books) that are just easier to use online than in print (and the semi-annual regulatory agenda may be one of them), just putting them online may create new access problems (for those who don't have online access) and preservation problems (will these be saved and unaltered and by whom at what cost?).  They may also present new problems of discovery when it is not easy to determine which of many versions is the complete one or the current one or which search produces the correct result.

And don't forget that one of the main motivations behind this switch is that the government wants to save money -- not expend more on preservation.  GovExec.com  says the shift to online publication of the Unified Agenda will "save" the government $800,000 (Agencies put regulatory plans online by Elizabeth Newell, December 11, 2007).

• 1,700 Pages of Rules, Fewer Dead Trees. By Cindy Skrzycki, Washington Post (December 18, 2007).

Until now, the Federal Register, the government's daily accounting of rules, printed the entire agenda in several bound volumes. It has been available online since 1995. Its search system, connected to the U.S. Government Printing Office, was challenging for some users....

The migration to http://www.reginfo.gov saves money and makes rulemaking more available to the public, administration officials said....

The agenda is available on two other government sites. The Federal Register is still required to print two categories of rules, offering the partial agenda and plan in print and at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/ua/index.html.

The other site is http://www.regulations.gov, the electronic docket for commenting on rules.

OMBWatch notes that "Since the Unified Agenda has gone paperless, you will also be unable to find entries in the PDF version of the Federal Register on the Government Printing Office website" (Agencies' Regulatory Plans Available Online,  December 12, 2007)

Stephen Ruth and Soogwan Doh, Is E-Government Ready for Prime Time?, IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 11, no. 2, 2007, pp. 80-82. (IEEE Distributed Systems Online)

This is an interesting take on e-government with an international and technical perspective. It includes a sidebar, "Touring E-Government Web Sites" that cites "Possibly the world’s best known e-government site, the US government’s official Web Portal" (USA.gov), as well as sites from the World Bank, The European Union, and North Korea. The article notes problems with e-government intitiatives quoting one study that says that only about "15 percent of e-government projects meet their goals and more than a third are complete failures." The authors do express optimism though. They say that "Some day, perhaps all citizens will be treated like customers" -- a statement that caries a lot of unstated political and information-access assumptions that should be examined closely.

One of the documents included in the president’s FY 2004 budget declared “…we are no closer to measurable accountability than in President Johnson’s day”(48). In the budget for that year, the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) showed how they were addressing this problem with something called the Program Assessment Rating Tool, or PART.

PART was initially developed in 2002 (from what I’ve been able to determine). By 2004, its performance rating assessments were growing in numbers of programs assessed and in influencing budgeting decisions.It is a questionnaire executed by the OMB and the agency whose program is being assessed. The questions are in weighted into four categories: Program Purpose & Design (20%), Planning (10%), Management (20%), Results (50%).

PART questions are designed for short answers and are to be accompanied with supporting evidence (or other details when applicable). Lack of supporting detail for an answer may result in a disfavorable score for a particular question. PART answers determine a program’s overall rating. An important objective of the PART assessment process is to help an agency develop an improvement plan for a program –which is then used to evaluate performance in subsequent evaluations. A PART assessment should help clarify a program’s purpose, design, planning, management, results, and accountability and help decision makers (and citizens) determine its overall effectiveness.

There are seven types of programs eligible for PART, including Direct Federal, Competitive Grant, Block/Formula Grant, and Capital Assets and Service Acquisition (like big-budget defense acquisitions). Programs were initially to be assessed every five years. The FAQ on the OMB page has more detail.

Citizens can get PART assessments from Expectmore.gov. The site was launched formally by the OMB in April of this year(the site was initially launched in February). By making assessments of Federal programs based on PART results available to the public, it is believed such public accountability for performance increases transparency and help us judge whether a program is using resources effectively.

Programs have two categories of ratings, “Performing” (broken down into three sub-categories of “Effective”, “Moderately Effective”, or “Adequate”) and “Not Performing” (as either “Ineffective” or “Results Not Demonstrated”). Currently, according to PART assessment results of about 800 programs,

• 72% of Federal programs are “Performing”:
  • 15% of Federal programs are Effective (meaning these programs set “ambitious goals, achieve results, are well-managed and improve efficiency”).
  • 29% of Federal programs are Moderately Effective.
  • 28% of Federal programs are Adequate.

• 28% of Federal programs are “Not Performing”:
  • 4% of Federal programs are Ineffective (meaning these programs have been judged to be “unable to achieve results due to a lack of clarity regarding the program's purpose or goals, poor management, or some other significant weakness”). Some examples of “Ineffective” programs are the “EPA Ecological Research” and Amtrak .

  • 24% of Federal programs are Results Not Demonstrated. Includes those programs which were not able to collect adequate data.

The answers to PART questionnaires for an individual program are available on expectmore.gov. From the main page click on either “Show me the programs that are Performing” or “Not Performing”. These results you have to scroll thru as these query results are not downloadable to Excel for quicker sorting (however, you can get a dump of all programs, ratings, and recent funding information based on FY 2007 requests on the “Funding information for each program” link). Next, select a program and bring up its assessment page; at the bottom of the page is a “Learn More” link on the left and a “Assessment Details, Funding, and Improvement Plan” link to the right of that. Each assessment has a link to a “Program Performance Measures” and “Program Improvement Plans” (every program has an improvement plan regardless of its rating being “Effective” or “Not Effective”).

FCC LAUNCHES "RURAL HEALTH CARE PILOT PROGRAM" WEBSITE Press Release (November 21, 2006) fcc.gov

The FCC has launched a website (http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/rural/rhcp.html) that provides a consolidated source of information about the FCC's recently announced Rural Health Care Pilot Program. The website includes the Order adopting the pilot program and the accompanying news release, a PDF slide presentation giving an overview of the program, and frequently asked questions (FAQs), The website will be updated periodically, as appropriate.

The FCC's pilot program is an innovative, enhanced funding initiative intended to help public and non-profit health care providers construct state- and region-wide broadband networks to provide telehealth and telemedicine services throughout the nation. The program will fund up to 85% of the costs of constructing those networks, as well as the costs of advanced telecommunications and information services that will ride over these networks. If selected, up to 85% of the cost of connecting to Internet2, a dedicated nationwide backbone, may also be funded by the pilot program. Connection to Internet 2 is not required, but may be requested by the applicants....