E-Government bill waits in the wings; the idea of a federal CIO has been met with resistance, but hope is still alive that the Bush administration will get on board.

• Author: Tillman, Bob
• Position: Capital Edge: legislative & regulatory update

Although an increasing number of Americans are looking to the Internet for information from and about the federal government, electronic government (e-government) lacks the infrastructure and organization to properly meet their needs. According to a recent survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a Washington nonprofit organization that studies how the Internet affects American life, the number of Americans seeking information from government Web sites increased by 70 percent, rising to 68 million people, in the past two years.

To meet citizens' needs and provide a framework for the use of Internet-based information technology to improve their access to government services and information, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee proposed S. 803, the E-Government Act of 2001, which called for establishing a federal chief information officer (CIO) position. But that idea has been met with resistance, and the bill's supporters have had to settle for an amended version.

In late March the committee, chaired by U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), agreed to a compromise version of S.803 and sent it to the Senate floor. The bill passed by the committee was a revised version that did not call for the establishment of a federal CIO at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The federal CIO would have been responsible for promoting e-government and implementing government-wide information policy and would have reported directly to the OMB director. The existing Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs would have retained responsibility for information collection review functions; however, the new office of the federal CIO would have overseen information dissemination functions and other functions prescribed by the Paperwork Reduction Act. The revised bill calls for the establishment of an administrator to chair the Chief Information Officer Council and run a new Office of Information Policy at OMB.

The bill Lieberman introduced last year aims to usher in "next-generation government" with the development of the federal government's information management and technology policy and seeks to create greater usability and link information between agencies.

With the use of computers and the Internet rapidly transforming societal interactions and relationships among citizens, private businesses, and the government, the federal government's response has been unbalanced. Most Internet-based government services have been developed and presented separately, according to the jurisdictional boundaries of an individual department or agency, rather than integrated cooperatively according to function. Lieberman's proposal seeks to change this disconnect by promoting interagency cooperation and adequately funding and staffing such functions.

"The private sector has benefited...