All e-government is local, tech leaders say

When it comes to e-government, federal leaders need to think locally, technology executives told members of the Association of Government Accountants Friday. David McClure, director of Information Technology for the General Accounting Office, moderated a panel entitled "Electronic Government--Opportunities and Pitfalls," at the association's annual conference in Washington. Also on the panel were Bradley Dugger, Tennessee's chief information officer; Donald Evans, chief information officer for Public Technology Inc.; and John Estey, senior vice president and general counsel for NetGov.com. According to Dugger, any further growth in the area of e-government should incorporate input from its users at the local level. In November, a General Services Administration report found that effective e-government initiatives are based on comprehensive efforts to measure public expectations, including soliciting feedback on what services should be provided online. "We need to meet the citizens' desires and wants," Dugger said, describing how Tennessee's Web site allows visitors to offer feedback about what they would like to see on the site. "Our citizens interact with our government based on what their needs are, and we need to personalize it based on what they need." Government Web sites should provide reasonable security, have clear privacy policies, and make help desk staff available 24 hours a day, Dugger said. They should also gain experience at the local government level before moving on to the federal government, rather than the reverse, he added. "The citizens live in local communities and work in local communities," Dugger said. "We need to be visible with our citizens, come out of our ivory towers and go around and listen in our schools, our churches and our barber shops." While governments should work with each other, they also need to be partners with the private sector, Donald Evans said. "Local governments are often struggling with trying to do the right thing with as little money as possible," Evans said. "It does take money to do this, but the antithesis to this is everybody wants a smaller government." Long-term investments are needed to fund e-government initiatives because these projects cannot be executed with an annual budget, panelists said. According to the panelists, e-government efforts are slowly evolving beyond just providing information, with more government-to-citizen, government-to-business and government-to-government transactions taking place online. "We're moving from reinventing to e-inventing," said Alan Balutis, director of the Advanced Technology Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "As we see this evolution, we'll see a drive to see transactions online."