Online Government Information Not User-Friendly, Report Says

Publication: Washington Internet Daily

Alexis Fabbri
October 23, 2007

Transparent government, 21st-century style, means making data easily accessible online -- a task at which U.S. agencies fail miserably, George Mason University Adjunct Law Professor Jerry Brito told us. In a paper, Brito calls online government offerings "very sad indeed" and urges a revamp. Most government agencies are moving their data to Regulations.gov, as part of OMB's e-gov effort. "The idea is that in the near future" all agencies will have their dockets on one site, a good idea in theory, Brito told us. But Regulations.gov is "not that great, either," he said: It lacks XML and users can't do keyword searches.

The Congressional Research Service issued similar findings in a report last week. The service criticized "the general navigability" of the Regulations.gov Web site and the "consistency and completeness of data," and it related several unsuccessful attempts by Service staff to find information. And the Open House Project, a project of the Sunlight Foundation, produced a report on how Congress can "open its business to the public." It recommended publishing online "structured databases" of the status of legislation, the roster of Congress, committee membership, and congressional district ZIP codes. It said Thomas.gov should provide permanent links to all documents and that the Office of the Clerk of the House should be a source for digital disclosure information.

Agencies, Congress and other entities should put material online in "useful formats," Brito said. Using XML- tagged data, government bodies could let users know every time an ex parte letter is filed, he said. Anyone could mash up that content with other data. But the situation at the FCC is "so terrible," there's no index of open proceedings and a user needs a docket number and other information to find them, he said. Brito's paper cited FCC.gov as an example of what government sites do wrong. The site hasn't moved its data to Regulations.gov and it's still running its own active docket data. Lack of search functionality frustrates users, he said. And documents that are found are in Word or PDF format, not simple on-screen XML, he said.

"There is no excuse for government's failure not to put data online," Brito said in the report. Although agencies often complain about skimpy information technology budgets, they often spend more money buying proprietary software from contractors, he said. "If they just used blogging software" or other "off the shelf free technologies," users could access data much more easily, he said. Even setting up a Google box for internal searches would help, he said.

Agency IT Management Improves

In general, agencies are "more effectively" managing their IT investments, said an OMB report released Monday. On Sept. 30, 134 projects remained on the OMB High Risk Watch List, down 61 percent from the 346 in February 2007. In the 212 investments cleared from the list, agencies were able to "adequately address deficiencies and weaknesses" by solving problems or providing OMB additional documentation. Under the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996, agencies are required to give OMB their business plans for IT investments. Projects classed as "high risk" require special attention but aren't necessarily "at risk" of failing, OMB said.