CIO Council funds eight new portals, seeks e-gov ideas
The CIO Council's e-government committee also announced last week that it is seeking the best ideas of senior executives at federal agencies on electronic government. Executives can e-mail their suggestions on e-government activities and strategies to , the Office of Management and Budget announced last week. Over the next two weeks, several agency leaders will also be asked to speak with members of the task force to share their ideas. The task force, which began meeting for the first time last week, is led by Mark Forman, associate director for information technology and e-government at OMB. "The task force welcomes and encourages the exchange of ideas on improving e-government with federal executives, employees and other interested parties," said Jennifer Wood, an OMB spokeswoman. Based on information collected by the task force from managers' personal appearances and e-mails, the President's Management Council will choose about 10 e-government projects to serve as the nexus of the White House's e-government mission over the next two years.
The e-Government Committee of the CIO Council selected eight individual portal projects last week for fiscal 2001 funding, according to a memo obtained by GovExec.com. The eight projects will receive $1.2 million in total funding. The Cross-Agency Portal Working Group of the CIO Council's e-government committee chose the winners from a field of 17 submissions. They include:
- A "virtual home center" to be run by the Housing and Urban Development Department that will help prospective homebuyers buy homes from federal agencies.
- A new portal for low-income Americans run by the Health and Human Services Department that would include information on benefits, grants and taxes.
- A $500,000 enhancement to the Social Security Administration's Seniors.gov site and the Education Department's Students.gov site to build an online services locator for disabled Americans and to create a "portal builder tool" to develop future sites.