Web

Federal Portals

A recent Economist survey of “eGovernment” suggests that, among other things, governments should develop a central portal something along the lines of Singapore’s site. The U.S. will start spending money in the hopes of getting there. Let’s hope they keep a second suggestion of Matthew Symonds in mind:

“Prime ministers and presidents do not need to know how to write Java code, but they must have the basic familiarity with technology that comes from using computers and the Internet in their daily lives. Bosses whose idea of using e-mail is to get their assistants to provide printouts are ill-equipped to lead the transformation of their firms into e-businesses. They do not know the right questions to ask, and lack credibility with employees. The same applies to senior politicians.”

The notion of a federal Yahoo!, as it were, isn’t a bad one; the feds have even tried to do it before. But until the government can attract and retain good IT employees and streamline its various systems and processes into a workable load, a bunch of links is about all we can expect.