Facing off on e-gov
The senator stays connected. His e-government bill sets the stage for citizens to do the same.
President Bush and Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) are not far apart on some elements of e-government. Here are some areas of comparison between Lieberman's e-government bill and President Bush's budget proposal for fiscal 2002.
| Federal chief information officer | A CIO would head a new Office of Information Policy and report to the director of the Office of Management and Budget. | Duties would be assigned to OMB deputy director for management. |
| E-government fund | $200 million a year would be allocated to help fund cross-agency projects. | $20 million would be allocated in 2002; $100 million over three years. |
| Citizen-centric government | Lieberman believes e-government offers an opportunity to align government interactions with customer needs rather than agency boundaries. | Bush believes that providing access to information and services is only the first step in e-government. Agencies are to work together to consolidate similar functions around the needs of citizens and businesses. |
| Portal | Building on the FirstGov portal would permit access to all online government information and services through a single, functionally arranged Web page. | Building on the foundation of FirstGov, the federal government should create a portal to provide online information 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It should be searchable by topic rather than by agency. |
| Electronic signatures | Allocate $7 million to develop a "bridge" so that otherwise incompatible digital signatures can be used by various agencies. | Develop digital signatures that can be accepted across agencies for secure online communications. |
| Procurement | Changes in the law would make it easier for agencies to use contracts that pay contractors with a portion of savings and let agencies keep some savings for additional IT expenditures. | With spending on service contracts at $110 billion a year, the federal agencies should rely on performance-based contracts wherever possible. Savings could reach $8.3 billion over five years. |
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