FirstGov Web portal deluged with citizen e-mail

Citizens are flooding FirstGov, the federal Web portal, with e-mail requests for information, creating a technology and management headache for the site's operators. When FirstGov debuted last September as the one-stop shop for access to government services and information, 95 percent of all e-mail correspondence consisted of compliments and recommendations. Now, 70 percent of FirstGov's e-mails are queries that need to be routed to the appropriate agency and responded to, according to Deborah Diaz, deputy associate administrator of the Office of FirstGov, which is a part of the General Services Administration's Office of Governmentwide Policy. "Many citizens just don't know where to go for answers to their questions about the federal government," said Diaz."The number of feedback e-mails has diminished, while the number of queries looking for responses has increased." Diaz said the flood of e-mails is a positive, if unforeseen, step in FirstGov's evolution. "This is a transformation of the citizens," she said. "People want more out of their government and want to use the Internet to make that happen." FirstGov does not have the systems in place to handle the crush of e-mail. So the FirstGov team is looking for ways to route citizen e-mails to the correct agency. Diaz and her staff also want to ensure that agencies respond to the forwarded e-mails so that citizen questions are answered in a timely and appropriate manner. Customer relationship management technology, a set of tools used in the private sector to identify, retain and serve paying customers, could be the answer to FirstGov's dilemma, said Diaz. Because agencies have their own ways of managing citizen correspondence, FirstGov is looking for a system that can be rolled out in phases and can expand to include agencies that might want to be part of the service. FirstGov is not the only federal program trying to improve e-mail response. The Chief Information Officers Council's Interagency Feedback Group includes representatives from agencies and congressional staffs who receive a large amount of public correspondence and are looking for ways to manage it.