Just as the Pledge of Allegiance stirs up controversy, so does the United States’ e-government effort to serve up a viable web portal for its citizens.
After a search [for what I expect should be a Yahoo!-like portal] on the [dot] GOV network, I found USA.GOV. The URL itself holds significant marketability and it makes for top billet and easy recognition in a web search. But, after entering the USA.GOV site, I was sent off into an one-way labyrinth of chaos and calamity.
Navigation through the site kept me moving and busy — but not in a clear direction. What’s wrong? I believe the initial breakdown is not conveying the organization of government’s main and tertiary departments — not displaying them on the landing page as an intuitive user-friendly layout.
First off and very basic: Visitors to USA.GOV are presented with a multilevel horizontal navigation bar that does little in the way of reflecting actual US departmental hierarchy. Then — after the landing page — the site does no more than put visitors on what looks like an alphabetical ‘site map.’ If not a site map-like page, visitors will find themselves on a URL totally *outside* the USA.GOV portal with yet another design, look and feel.
A lot of great information links off USA.GOV. Just not in a manner that feels consistent with ‘one’ portal. The site and ALL its sub links are prime for consolidation and unification — an agenda item I believe President-elect Barack Obama spells out in his Innovation and Technology fact sheet — “Create a transparent and connected democracy.”
It could be worse, an all Sharepoint USA.gov.
January 6, 2009 @ 02:05
Even *that* could be an improvement. Why don't you hook up your avatar with IntenseDebate, Jim?
January 6, 2009 @ 02:38
Not sure that is necessarily a _bad_ thing per se. It really all boils down to how a Sharepoint site is structured. Certainly if they went with "out-the-box" Sharepoint, the result would be disastrous. However, with major customization they could turn that in to a useful idea methinks.
January 7, 2009 @ 08:23
Just shows that our government is way too big, and it's still growing out of control. What happened to the beautiful republic that the founding fathers gave us? Will we ever find it again?
January 6, 2009 @ 10:46
Exactly. There's a lot of great things going on in government, but there is no cohesion joining it all. Agencies just keep doing their own thing — hence why we are looking at a TRILLION DOLLAR deficit in 2009.
January 6, 2009 @ 11:56
"There's a lot of great things going on in government…"
That's the whole problem! There shouldn't be a lot of great things going on in government. There should only be a few great things going on, and leave the rest to the people who know what they're doing and how to do it cost-effectively.
January 7, 2009 @ 12:09
Putting 'my' spin on your comment: We need more great things going on in government and we need them more cost-effectively. Consolidation is a 'great thing.' Streamlining is a 'great thing.' Waste reduction is a 'great thing.' Going GREEN is a 'great thing.'
January 7, 2009 @ 12:16
But your spin suggests letting government continue to dig its way further into citizens' everyday lives = less freedom. What we need is a reduction in government. Waste reduction is the key because 80% of the whole government is pure waste. Get rid of the waste = reduction in government of 80%. That's a good start.
January 7, 2009 @ 12:31
The right technology tools are out there. It's a matter of bringing them together. And then, you might just see your significant reduction.
January 7, 2009 @ 02:03
I'm sure you are right, but you need to find people in the government who are willing to implement the technologies all the while with the knowledge that doing so could jeopardize their very own job. Yep, it'll never happen. :-(
January 7, 2009 @ 04:17
Doubtful the Republic is ever coming back, but that does not necessarily mean the principles are forever lost.
January 7, 2009 @ 12:18
Yes, but the principles are lost in a democratic society. And history shows that democratic societies lead to tyranny or oligarchy, and it looks like that's where we are headed if something isn't changed soon. Actually it's probably already there behind the scenes, meaning that our beloved democracy is a farce.
January 7, 2009 @ 12:42
Impossible to cull out the fat in our overgrown government offices.. If only someone could step back and take a look at how many people are duplicating efforts to achieve the same task government wide, I think you'd save TRILLIONS of dollars by enforcing a better economy of effort. Of course that would mean a few more jobless folks, – people fired from Government jobs – a politicians nightmare..
January 7, 2009 @ 03:01
That is it right there – removing duplication of efforts. Not only will that save money in the long-run, but it allows for better organization of the data because the data owners will be far more consolidated than the current structure. This in turn will allow usa.gov to provide more useful answers since they should be able to categorize and collate the information in to a much easier presentation than we currently see.
January 7, 2009 @ 08:22
“Duplicating efforts…”
Mike, great point! I think what you have going on in e-gov is agencies throwing good money after bad to staff construction of e-infrastructure rather than, say, hire a crack team of analysts to reduce duplicate work. My fingers are crossed that 2009 brings US some change.
January 7, 2009 @ 03:14
It already is worse. If you take a close looks at Section 9, Para 7, of the U.S. Constitution, you'll notice that it says, "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time." The government got around this by faking an "incident" back in the 1940s and they have been spending money like a one-eyed willey in a whore house ever since. The cuurent "black" budget is approaching $100 billion, yet no one knows what it is for or what it does. If the Consitituion doesn't count anymore and government is no longer accountable for its expenditures, should we be at all surprised that they give us a piece of shit for the USA.GOV website?
January 8, 2009 @ 05:07
It already is worse. If you take a close looks at Section 9, Para 7, of the U.S. Constitution, you'll notice that it says, "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time." The government got around this by faking an "incident" back in the 1940s and they have been spending money like a one-eyed willey in a whore house ever since. The current "black" budget is approaching $100 billion, yet no one knows what it is for or what it does. If the Consitituion doesn't count anymore and government is no longer accountable for its expenditures, should we be at all surprised that they give us a piece of shit for the USA.GOV website?
January 8, 2009 @ 05:09
Duplication of efforts is only part of the problem. The other problem is that no government organization ever wants to get smaller, so what they do now is cover everything up under secrecy laws. If you take a close looks at Section 9, Para 7, of the U.S. Constitution, you'll notice that it says, "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time." The government got around this by faking an "incident" back in the 1940s and they have been spending money like a one-eyed willey in a whore house ever since. The current "black" budget is approaching $100 billion, yet no one knows what it is for or what it does. If the Consitituion doesn't count anymore and government is no longer accountable for its expenditures, should we be at all surprised that they give us a piece of shit for the USA.GOV website?
January 8, 2009 @ 05:11
Duplication of efforts is only part of the problem. The other problem is that no government organization ever wants to get smaller, so what they do now is cover everything up under secrecy laws. If you take a close looks at Section 9, Para 7, of the U.S. Constitution, you'll notice that it says, "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time." The government got around this by faking an "incident" back in the 1940s and they have been spending money like a one-eyed willy in a whore house ever since. The current "black" budget is approaching $100 billion, yet no one knows what it is for or what it does. If the Consitituion doesn't count anymore and government is no longer accountable for its expenditures, should we be at all surprised that they give us a piece of shit for the USA.GOV website?
January 8, 2009 @ 05:13
Duplication of efforts is only part of the problem. The other problem is that no government organization ever wants to get smaller, so what they do now is cover everything up under secrecy laws. If you take a close looks at Section 9, Para 7, of the U.S. Constitution, you'll notice that it says, "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time." The government got around this by faking an "incident" back in the 1940s and they have been spending money like a one-eyed willy in a whore house ever since. The current "black" budget is approaching $100 billion, yet no one knows what it is for or what it does. If the Consitituion doesn't count anymore and government is no longer accountable for its expenditures, should we be at all surprised that they give us a piece of shit for the USA.GOV website? It would be interesting to find out how much they paid to create and maintian this site. My guess is it is way too much for what they got.
January 8, 2009 @ 05:15
Duplication of efforts is only part of the problem. The other problem is that no government organization ever wants to get smaller, so what they do now is cover everything up under secrecy laws. If you take a close looks at Section 9, Para 7, of the U.S. Constitution, you'll notice that it says, "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time." The government got around this by faking an "incident" back in the 1940s and they have been spending money like a one-eyed willy in a whore house ever since. The current "black" budget is approaching $100 billion, yet no one knows what it is for or what it does. If the Consitituion doesn't count anymore and government is no longer accountable for its expenditures, should we be at all surprised that they give us a piece of shit for the USA.GOV website? It would be interesting to find out how much they paid to create and maintain this site. My guess is it is way too much for what they got.
January 8, 2009 @ 05:16
Duplication of efforts is only part of the problem. The other problem is that no government organization ever wants to get smaller, so what they do now is cover everything up under secrecy laws. If you take a close looks at Section 9, Para 7, of the U.S. Constitution, you'll notice that it says, "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time." The government got around this by faking an "incident" back in the 1940s and they have been spending money like a one-eyed willy in a whore house ever since. The current "black" budget is approaching $100 billion, yet no one knows what it is for or what it does. If the Constitution doesn't count anymore and government is no longer accountable for its expenditures, should we be at all surprised that they give us a piece of shit for the USA.GOV website? It would be interesting to find out how much they paid to create and maintain this site. My guess is it is way too much for what they got.
January 8, 2009 @ 05:18