The Wonder Years

When federal agencies first started setting up sites on the World Wide Web three or four years ago, many just wanted their home pages to be cool. So they playfully used animated images and dancing text. Others were less flashy, but no more useful; they were limited to agency logos, pictures of Cabinet secretaries and mission statements.

Now, federal Web sites have entered their cyber-adolescence. Federal webmasters are losing their braces and redesigning their Internet faces. They are learning that what's on the outside isn't as important as what's on the inside-solid information for citizens in search of quick answers.

Still, some agencies are struggling to make their sites fit in. In some cases, attempts to boldly undertake new online initiatives have been thwarted.

"Three years ago, the Internet was an environment where agencies were creating a presence on the Web because they wanted to say they had a Web site," says Rich Kellett, an Internet policy specialist at the General Services Administration's Office of Governmentwide Policy and co-chairman of the Federal Webmasters Forum. "Now, agencies are transitioning into using the Internet as a tool for day-to-day operations."

True to the nature of the Internet, which has grown in thousands of different directions since Pentagon researchers planted its seeds more than 30 years ago, federal Web sites sprang up in the early 1990s wherever a program analyst, project manager or other employee volunteered to learn HTML, the format for documents on the Web. With little guidance from Washington policy-makers, self-appointed agency webmasters (and those drafted for the job) taught themselves how to publish on the Internet.

The webmasters then made their cases for bigger Web budgets. Some agency executives encouraged Web enthusiasts to push forward with their online experiments. Others were less receptive to the idea of spending money on an unproven medium.

Even in the absence of presidential directives or congressional edicts, federal Web sites flourished. The General Accounting Office reported in June 1997 that agencies had created more than 4,300 sites. The 42 agencies GAO surveyed for its report increased their spending on Internet technologies from an estimated $51 million in 1994 to $182 million in 1996.

Government innovators since 1992 have stocked the Web with millions of pages of information. Federal webmasters established online databases, virtual libraries, document centers, photo archives and Web-based news release and transcript services. The webmasters also began communicating with people around the world by electronic mail, answering questions and receiving comments about federal agencies. For federal employees often stifled by paperwork requirements and in-house regulations, the World Wide Web opened up opportunities to be creative.

"It is impossible to exaggerate the degree to which federal employees are tied down by petty rules and regulations," says David Osborne, author of Banishing Bureaucracy (Addison-Wesley, 1997) and a managing partner of the Public Strategies Group, a reengineering consulting firm. "When federal employees get an opportunity to innovate where there isn't much red tape yet, a lot of them seize the day. That is what has happened on the Web."

Webmasters tried to make their sites fun and interesting. The IRS spiced up tax information with its newspaper-style Web site, The Digital Daily. Using colorful graphics and campy headlines, the IRS draws people in to the Web site to download tax forms and find answers to tax questions. In the first two months of 1998, Americans visited the IRS Web site 166 million times-triple the visits during the same period in 1997.

Leaders of the Pack

"The Digital Daily" isn't the only site turning heads. "People who deal with the federal government on the Web tend to be surprised and delighted because we have such low expectations of what the public sector can do," Osborne says.

Candis Harrison, webmaster at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says proudly that her department's Web effort headed the pack. "We got ahead of other federal agencies' Web sites by realizing most people don't want to come and just find out about HUD," she says. "They want to know how we can help them find a house, or get street lights on the street."

Currently in its sixth version, HUD's site is not only visually appealing, but also rich in content. It wasn't that way when the department launched the site in April 1995. "We did four [versions] in the first year, because we were just feeling our way through," says Harrison. "The first site was four pictures. It was real primitive. Right now, I think we're at a point where we've got it. We just need to keep improving."

Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a Washington-based watchdog group that promotes public access to government information, says HUD is one of the federal government's Web trailblazers. "They took a daring try," he says. "What they did was just put their Web site up and then get feedback. It's one of the most innovative sites around."

HUD's site is a team-based effort. Harrison serves as the editor-in-chief, in charge of writing and editing material for the Web site. She works in tandem with HUD's information technology office and a contractor team that provides HTML and graphics support. "It's a great partnership," explains Harrison. "I think like the citizen and say 'Wouldn't it be neat if we did this?' And they tell me if the technology is available to do it."

How does Harrison come up with content that goes beyond press releases and puffery? She listens. "The first call I made was to my mother," she says. "I asked her 'When you think about HUD what do you think it should do?'"

Harrison just launched a kids' section to help children ages 5 to 8 learn what it means to be a citizen, but she doesn't want to stop there. In the works: a teenagers' section that will contain features like "Where will I live when I don't live with Mom?" and "Homebuying when you're 18 years old."

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," Harrison says.

The General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service is another agency whose young Web site has a promising future. In 1995, the supply service launched GSA Advantage!, an online catalog and ordering system for items on the GSA schedules. Since then, federal employees have ordered more than $54 million in goods and services through GSA Advantage! About $20 million of that total was ordered during the first five months of fiscal 1998. That's pennies compared to the Federal Supply Service's total business-more than $14 billion in fiscal 1997-but it's a start, says GSA Advantage! director Ed O'Hare.

Last summer, President Clinton directed GSA to put all 4 million items on its supply schedules on GSA Advantage! by July. As of March, only 370,000 items had made it onto the online ordering system. O'Hare says he's trying to make it easier for vendors to load their data onto the GSA Advantage! system and find ways to make it more customer-friendly. "They want to get in, buy something and get out," O'Hare says.

O'Hare follows several rules of thumb for running an electronic commerce site on the Web. Once a customer submits a transaction request, the response time should be kept under a second, provided the customer is using a fast Internet connection, O'Hare says. Now, GSA Advantage! customers on high-speed lines typically wait about four seconds. As technologies improve, the time people have to spend tapping their fingers, waiting for a response, will shrink. O'Hare also works with vendors to find out the best ways to conduct business online and talks to customers about what features they want to see on GSA Advantage!

Although smaller federal outposts don't have grand Web designs like GSA Advantage!, they too are finding the Web a valuable place to interact with the public. The Air Force Reserve's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, also known as the Hurricane Hunters, based at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss., has a Web site that takes people on a cyberflight into the eye of a hurricane.

The site explains the history of the squadron, its current activities, and how to become a Hurricane Hunter. Maj. Val Schmid, a flight meteorologist, runs the Web site part time, answering electronic mail questions and updating the site's photos. When hurricanes strike, the squadron takes a digital camera on flights into the storms, and within a few hours loads pictures of the hurricanes' eyes on the Web site. Providing that kind of service builds public support for her squadron, Schmid says.

"The site is a public relations tool," Schmid says. "The most gratifying part is working with the general public and the students. They love to talk to a real live Hurricane Hunter."

Testing the Waters

While the Hurricane Hunters bring Web users into the calm of the eyes of storms, several agencies have been caught up in whirlwinds of debate over the appropriate use of government information on the Internet. The most prominent example is the Social Security Administration. Last year, SSA's Web site pushed the government and the technologically challenged public a bit too far.

In March 1997, SSA launched an interactive Personal Earnings and Benefits Estimating Statement (PEBES) system, which allowed an individual to obtain on the Internet a complete history of his or her earnings, Social Security and Medicare payments and estimates of old age, disability and survivor benefits. To get the information, a user had to enter his or her name, Social Security number, date and state of birth, and mother's maiden name.

Privacy advocates, though, immediately charged that the system did not provide enough safeguards against improper access to records. Then-acting Social Security Commissioner John J. Callahan acknowledged that as many as 40 percent of the initial inquiries to the online PEBES system were invalid, suggesting a potential for misuse. Even though no incidents of abuse were reported, when an article about the controversy appeared in USA Today, Callahan pulled the plug on the PEBES section of the site only one month after it started.

Nearly 28,000 people requested the free information online during its operational span. In the two days after the story appeared, 71,000 people accessed the site to view PEBES information. The cancellation of the service was a "personal disappointment," says SSA webmaster Bruce Carter. "We were the first federal agency to do anything like that. We were testing the waters, but the privacy experts felt the criteria we were using were a little too loose for some people."

Now Carter and his cadre of 35 site content providers throughout SSA are searching for a new way to provide the same service with more security. Users can request online that a PEBES be sent through the mail after mulling through about three pages of disclaimers. Carter says he hopes that soon he will be able to offer users the option of obtaining a PEBES in a modified format online.

"We wouldn't provide as much information online," he says. "We would only give the estimate of the benefit." In addition, the user would be required to apply for an activation code, which would be received via e-mail. After receiving the code, the user could access the site and file his or her request.

The Environmental Protection Agency encountered problems similar to SSA's with its Sector Facility Indexing Project, which it had planned to launch in March. The site was designed to provide online access to environmental performance profiles of the producers of oil products, steel, automobiles and paper. The profiles were to include each factory's pollution permit violations, inspections, toxic releases and even demographic information about the communities surrounding their facilities.

The EPA site is one of the most innovative steps so far in the Clinton administration's campaign to expand "right-to-know initiatives," says OMB Watch's Bass. But industry and states criticized the project. A group of state regulators asked EPA officials to slow the project on the grounds that it was a "premature undertaking of questionable value."

Meanwhile, Jim Tozzi, an industry consultant and former Office of Management and Budget official, sued EPA in February in U.S. District Court to stop the project. "This plane is not ready for its maiden flight yet," Tozzi claimed. "It needs more work in the hangar." The district court, though, gave the EPA the go-ahead for the site on March 17.

While agencies' innovative uses of the Internet have caused some disillusionment, many customers are still pushing for interactive services. The Education Department, for example, allows college students to submit their student aid applications online and look up their student loan balances. The department plans to process 3 million financial aid applications a year over the Web by September 2000. In the first three months of 1998, more than 130,000 students filed their financial aid applications online.

Having hashed out several security issues in the wake of SSA's PEBES experiment, the Education Department requires students to submit more personal identifiers than they would if they called on the phone to find out their account balances. To look up their loan account balances, students must enter their Social Security numbers, birth dates and ZIP codes. But first, they must read through a description of the site's security features and a disclaimer that information may be read by a third party.

Taming the Web

The World Wide Web wonder years for federal agencies are still going strong, but webmasters are weary of the "let's see what happens if we do this" philosophy that characterized the Web's childhood.

Carol Cini, associate director of the Institute for Federal Printing and Electronic Publishing, a division of the Government Printing Office, likens the world of federal electronic publishing to the Wild West. "There aren't that many laws or regulations that govern federal Web sites," he says. "Each branch has policies and some are very different than others."

One issue Cini raises with his students is appropriate Web site content. "Some government Web sites have football schedules on them," he says. "Another one had Mexican recipes. Now is that really an official duty of the government to have that on there?"

Cini attributes the content problem to a confusion within agencies as to who is actually in charge of the site-the director of public affairs? The webmaster? Or the chief information officer? "We're definitely in the learning phase," he says. "Some agencies are even decentralizing the content to the point that now anyone can get on the server and put up what they want."

Bass and Cini agree that one of the more pressing issues is privacy. An OMB Watch report released last year concluded that federal agencies are not doing enough to protect the privacy of visitors to their Web sites. Of 70 federal Web sites surveyed, 31 collected personally identifiable information (name, e-mail address or Social Security number) in some form. However, only 11 of the 31 agencies provided notices about what they did with the information. The study also concluded that at least four agencies violated provisions of the 1974 Privacy Act, which restricts how federal agencies gather and use personal records.

Other concerns include copyrights, linking to commercial sites and disclaimers, says Cini. Should government agencies be allowed to copyright graphics on their sites? Should the military be able to link to commercial sites? Should sites with graphic medical photos be preceded by a warning?

The Clinton administration could clear up some of these dilemmas by developing a plan that says the primary objective of the government is to make information accessible, Bass suggests. Then, he says, the administration should focus on "integrating the laws designed for a paper world into the electronic world."

For example, many agencies are setting up electronic reading rooms of documents frequently requested under the Freedom of Information Act. In the FBI's electronic FOIA reading room, Elvis Presley fans can plow through 663 pages of FBI documents filed under the King of Rock's name. Users can download 80 pages on Marilyn Monroe.

Electronic records management is also becoming a contentious issue for webmasters. Many agencies' policies governing records management have not been updated for the digital age. To be safe, some webmasters are backing up their entire Web sites each day on tapes. But how people in the future would access those backup tapes still must be determined.

"People in agencies haven't come to grips yet with what they need to do to maintain records in an electronic environment," says Chuck McClure, an information studies professor at Syracuse University and author of a recent report outlining guidelines for electronic records management. "When a record has been produced in electronic form and put up on the Web, when there is no additional or no equivalent print version, agencies are [still] trying to convince themselves that does not constitute a record."

Web site security is yet another issue weighing heavily on the minds of federal webmasters. Federal Web sites are typically housed on computers not connected to agencies' internal networks. But the more interactive a site becomes, the greater the security issues grow. And "there's no place federal webmasters can turn for security training, guidance and support. It's all being done by the seat of their pants," says Carlynn Thompson, director of research development and acquisition information support at the Defense Technical Information Center. "Managers have to understand the risk they're putting their organizations in if they're not providing for security guidance."

Thompson says the Defense Department is ahead of the rest of the government in developing security policies for its Web sites. DoD sites frequently carry privacy and security notices alerting potential hackers that unauthorized access violates federal law.

Growing Up

The Defense Technical Information Center works with DoD's public affairs office on Web standards for the department. Capt. Jim Knotts, a public affairs officer and program manager for the military's central Web site, DefenseLink, lays out three steps to developing a successful Web site.

First, webmasters need to understand their organizations' missions. Then they need to map out how they want their Web sites to communicate those missions. Finally, they need to identify their audiences and find out what kinds of information they want.

Electronic publishing gurus tend to agree that a successful federal Web site revolves around solid content rather than slick presentation. "The general public is not looking for a graphic-rich site," says T.C. Evans, assistant director of the Office of Electronic Information Dissemination Services at the Government Printing Office. "They're just looking for basic information."

Knotts cautions against top-down policies that can stifle new Web developments. The Pentagon issues basic policy guidelines, but doesn't put constraints on sites simply for consistency's sake. "By allowing people to exercise their own creativity, they're coming up with new and innovative ways to use this new technology," Knotts says. "The local organization knows its mission better than anyone else, and they will know how to communicate that information to the American public better than anyone else."

Often, though, the problem is finding the money to put that information out on the Web and keep it updated. As federal organizations downsize and see their budgets decline, new money for Web projects is hard to find. "Agencies are under the gun," Bass says. "And they've been given no resources for Web development."

Agencies often try to put the responsibility for maintaining Web sites on the shoulders of one person who has other full-time responsibilities. "Many agencies have not recognized that running a Web site is a full-time job," says Kellett.

Partly in an effort to combat the budget problem, agencies are collaborating on Web projects. Several interagency sites have cropped up over the last year, including U.S. State and Local Gateway, a site aimed at making it easier for state and local governments to do business with federal agencies. Other one-stop shopping sites include FedStats, Healthfinder and U.S. Business Advisor. Also, the General Services Administration recently created US Gold, an online directory of federal information for the general public.

Harrison says it's important for agencies to band together to ensure that the public receives the information it needs. "We need to be unselfish about things," she says. "It's not so important to say that we're from HUD or EPA. It's important to say we can help you find what you're looking for."

Observers foresee a future where much of the business the federal government conducts will be over the Web. "When my generation retires, I'm sure we'll do 90 percent of our interaction with Social Security online," Osborne says. "And I don't think we'll think much about it. But I don't think it's going to cause a great change in how Americans perceive the federal government. The private sector keeps raising our expectations. Compared with the private sector, I don't think people will be that impressed with what the federal government is doing with the Web."