We Want Government Information

There are a lot of ways to look at e-government.

You can approach it from a design standpoint and appraise a site based on its fonts, colors and graphics or on how many Web 2.0 applications it uses. You can look at it from an organization angle, judging a site by how well it presents its information or how easy it is to navigate.

You can approach it from the transactional perspective, analyzing a site by the kinds of interactive services it provides and how easy those services are for users to use.

Ultimately, though, all those ways to evaluate e-government all have the same goal: trying to figure out the best way to help visitors find the information they need, or at least come across information they will find useful.

It’s probably safe to say that most librarians grasp how important it is to be able to easily find electronic government information. For example, legal and corporate librarians interact with government information on a regular basis, whether they’re looking for recently enacted legislation or a company’s latest SEC filing.

As noted by Richard Paré in a 2002 paper for the 68th IFLA General Conference and Council, academic libraries with government publication collections now have “the option of collecting less printed government material, thus helping to relieve the pressure on storage space.” In some cases, it’s not even an option, with publications like the Federal Reserve Bulletin moving over to an electronic-only format.

Even public librarians are not strangers to e-government. The 2006 Library Journal article “Drafted: I Want You to Deliver E-Government” reports that public libraries have become “de facto e-government access points.” A Florida librarian told the article’s authors:

Government agencies are requiring that clients use the Internet to apply for benefits, set appointments, or file complaints online. [Clients] are all told to go to the library if they do not have Internet access at home. The library is the safety net so that people do not get left behind in this information age.

I will be writing about e-government for Libgig with all that in mind. I plan to look at innovative ways government information can be presented electronically, and to discuss the barriers users may find when visiting e-government sites.

Let’s start by discussing federal government blogs. Although blogs date back to 1997, David Wyld writes in his 2007 report The Blogging Revolution that their use in the government is only a fairly recent phenomenon. Wyld notes that former FCC chair Michael Powell began a blog in 2004, while some members of Congress started blogging in 2005.

Recently, federal agencies have gotten in on the action. Since September 2007, such agencies as Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, and the Transportation Security Administration have all added blogs to their sites. Even the government portal USA.gov has its own blog, called GovGab, which highlights different e-government resources based on daily themes. USA.gov also has a page of active and archived government blogs.

The TSA blog, Evolution of Security, started in January 2008. As Megan Scott noted in her AP article “Passengers air grievances on TSA Blog,” the initial post on January 30 received 700 comments within 24 hours after it was published. Although some of the comments were deleted for foul and threatening language, comments critical of the TSA have been kept in. The five bloggers who write Evolution of Security have also made efforts to respond to the criticism.

The State Department’s blog, Dipnote, brings in department officials to write about their experiences working in the foreign service. It also features open threads, in which a topic is presented for discussion in the comments section. State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack occasionally contributes comments as well, as seen in a recent post about food riots.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is one of the agency officials who writes for the DHS blog Leadership Journal. In his first post, Chertoff wrote, “I’ve started this journal to open a dialogue with the American people about our nation’s security.” This idea falls in line with one of the reasons David Wyld recommends government officials start blogs (quoting a post by web designer Andy Budd): “’to communicate directly with the community, by passing both internal and news based editorial control’ and to ‘give a human face to often monolithic organizations.’”

Both DHS and TSA are also using their blogs to clarify and to defend policies, such as REAL ID or millimeter wave technology. One could argue that by doing so, the agencies simply promoting their own agendas. On the other hand, by writing about their policies in forums designed to reach out to the American people, the agencies are laying out their arguments in more accessible ways than you would find in bills or even agency press releases.

It’s too early to tell how much agency blogs will contribute to the dissemination of government information. So far the signs are promising, and it will be interesting to see how these blogs develop.