Council recommends Bush name e-government czar

The Council for Excellence in Government Wednesday recommended that President Bush add an e-government czar to his Cabinet. The recommendation was part of a council blueprint on how to create an electronic government called, "E-Government: The Next American Revolution." Patricia McGinnis, president and CEO of the council, said that the Internet has the potential to "revolutionize the relationship between Americans and their government." She compared the creation of the Internet to the invention of the printing press and its role in the Renaissance. "We are on the verge of something just as significant now," she said. McGinnis called on leaders from the President on down to embrace e-government. The council's recommendations include:

• Creating a public-private council devoted to e-government and headed by the e-government czar.
• Changing the Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget to the Deputy Director for Management and Technology.
• Creating a new Office of Electronic Government within OMB and another within Congress. The council calls for the OMB office to be headed by a presidentially-appointed federal chief information officer.
• Starting a working capital fund of $3 billion over five years to finance collaborative e-government initiatives across government. This would be a 1.5 percent increase in federal IT spending each year.

The council backed up its recommendations with polling done by Peter Hart and Robert Teeter in August 2000 and January 2001. According to the polling data, 73 percent of adults said e-government is a high priority, while 66 percent favored the formation of a federal technology czar. E-gov security and privacy were the top concerns of those polled. Stephen Goldsmith, an adviser to President Bush on government reform issues, said anything that saves money and improves services concurrently, as e-government does, is important. "Electronic government gives government the chance to do things better and more easily," Goldsmith said. The creation of an electronic government will not be free of obstacles. Agencies continue to have trouble attracting workers with the necessary technical skills. "We don't pay or [provide incentives to] our technology workers enough," said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., chairman of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Technology and Procurement Policy. "We have a digital economy with an analog government." Davis said that the blueprint would get serious consideration from his subcommittee. He supports the concept of having an e-government czar and also backs the idea of creating a working capital fund. "The $3 billion on top of what we already spend on IT is a good idea," he said. The federal government spends roughly $40 billion on IT annually. Davis said that e-government would transform federal agencies and the jobs within them. He admitted that some workers could lose their jobs in the move to an electronic government. But he said the efficiencies resulting from e-government would enhance the face-to-face interaction that occurs between government and citizens. Goldsmith said the biggest barrier to e-government is leadership, not technology. This leadership barrier takes the form of executives' "inability to understand the ability of technology to transform the nature and face of government," he said. Don Upson, Virginia's secretary of technology, said that e-government would not work without the right kind of leadership and the creation of a management structure. The council blueprint is the cumulative work of 350 people over 14 months.