FirstGov Web portal opens for business

The Clinton administration launched its FirstGov Web portal Friday, less than three months after the President announced the site would be built.

The site, at www.firstgov.gov, is designed to give citizens one-stop access to government services and information. The site allows users to search all 27 million federal government Web pages currently available on the Internet. The pages are searchable on FirstGov by topic rather than agency.

GRC International, a systems integrator, developed the portal. Eric Brewer, co-founder of Inktomi, a widely used Web search engine, donated the the search technology used on the site and began the effort to catalogue the millions of government Web pages.

FirstGov is the latest and most ambitious in a series of efforts to create federal Web portals that blur agency boundaries in favor of providing services to specific citizen and business segments. Two sites developed under the Clinton administration's Access America program, www.seniors.gov and www.students.gov are among the most prominent examples.

While FirstGov was developed quickly, it is a work in progress. Project organizers say they will revise the site and hone its look and feel based on user feedback.

"The President said June 24 that he wanted the site up in 90 days and we took him at his word and made this happen," said Bill Piatt, chief information officer at the General Services Administration and one of the coordinators of the FirstGov project. "We're already starting to think about what goes into release two of FirstGov. That release should be out by mid-December. But first, we want to receive feedback from users."