E-Government News

By Daniel Pulliam dpulliam@govexec.comWhile several of the Office of Management and Budget e-government projects have been unqualified success stories, others are still struggling to produce meaningful results. The Internal Revenue Service's Free File program, which allows taxpayers to prepare and file their taxes online free of charge, was used to file more than 70 million tax returns in 2006. The consolidation of agency payroll systems under the e-gov umbrella has changed the way many agencies pay their employees. By contrast, the Social Security Administration's eVital electronic death registration initiative is still in its developmental phase. Agency officials refused to comment on it because "it is too early to discuss details," said agency spokeswoman Kia Green, even though five years have passed since OMB announced that it would be part of its e-government effort. The General Services Administration's federal asset sales project and the Homeland Security Department's disaster management also have yet to reach fruition. With respect to the e-gov initiative in general, "there is frustration both at the agencies and on the Hill that no demonstrable reduction of cost or increase in service has been demonstrated," said a former federal official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Projects paid for and managed by single agencies have been more successful than those that have relied on OMB's interagency funding concept, colloquially known as "pass the hat." The latter approach has run into repeated roadblocks in the appropriations process on Capitol Hill. As a result, sources said, agency priorities have shifted from the e-gov effort to other OMB mandates, such as cybersecurity compliance and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, which requires the adoption of new identity cards for federal employees and contractors. Several of the more successful projects, such as GSA's eTravel service, the IRS's Free File project and the Interior Department's Recreation.gov Web site, already were in the development phase when OMB reclassified them as e-gov projects under the president's initiative. A senior OMB official said the initiatives face the greatest resistance when agency managers become concerned that they will result in a loss of funding and authority. The more wide-ranging and complex that e-government projects are -- and thus the most in need of interagency support -- the harder they are to pull off. The Health and Human Services Department's Grants.gov project, for example, set out to establish a system under which people can apply for all manner of federal grants on a single Web site. That process involved merging agencies' different business processes, definitions and application requirements, said HHS Chief Information Officer Charles Havekost. On a "philosophical level," it has been difficult for agencies to learn to "accept information through the same process that other agencies were using, when most agencies perceived that their business process were specific to them," Havekost said. The Small Business Administration's Business Gateway initiative, with a relatively small annual budget of $1 million, started out seeking to centralize access to more than 6,000 agency forms and other legal and regulatory information on a single Web site. Nancy Sternberg, Business Gateway's program manager, said the Business.gov Web site is gearing up for a relaunch in early to mid October that will focus more narrowly on the needs of businesses to comply with federal regulations. More than 100 government organizations will be contributing information to the site in an effort to create a one-stop resource for businesses. GSA's Federal Asset Sales site was intended as a governmentwide portal for sales of excess property, but the project struggled to move forward as logistics proved difficult. It, too, is due for a relaunch in October with a new focus on setting up sales centers within agencies that already are well established in selling excess government property. Interior's Recreation.gov project involved consolidating federal park information on a single easy-to-navigate Web site. But the effort to consolidate reservation booking systems has been held up in contract protests. Source: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0806/083106eg4.htm

Author: .I.KhalilovaToday upon the completion of talks with South Korean economic mission in Azerbaijan, the protocol “Mutual understanding” was signed, Trend reports, by Deputy Minister of Economic Development Niyazi Safarov and Korean Deputy Minister of Trade, Industry and energy Lee Von Gul. Safarov positively appraised the talks, which continue those held during May visit of Korean president to Azerbaijan. «Korea is really interested in co-operation in over 20 economy spheres (trade, investments, communication and IT, energy, agriculture and so», said Safarov. Safarov also said it is too early to speak of amounts of investments in Azerbaijan as the talks on the projects have just started. During the meetings at the ministry of Communication and IT officials discussed Korea’s participation in e-government and IT development project. «We also discussed free economic zones with Koreans. We said we consider their experience quite useful and they stated their willingness to assist», said Safarov. Mr Gul said of his country’s readiness to co-operate with Azerbaijan. This statement is confirmed by the size of Korean delegation (61 people), including executives of state oil&gas corporations, leading private companies, in particular Daewoo International Corporation, Hyundai Electric & Machinery, SK Corporation and so on. Source: http://www.trend.az/?mod=shownews&news=26629〈=en

Amsterdam and Warsaw (ots/PRNewswire) -- Gemalto to Equip Poland With Over 1.5 Million e-Passport Inlays by the end of 2007 Gemalto (Euronext NL 0000400653 GTO), a leader in digital security, today announced it will supply its Setec(x) e-passport solution for the future Polish electronic passports. The first commercial deliveries started in July, and under the frame agreement, Gemalto will provide the Polish Printing State Agency (PWPW) with the inlays for electronic covers of the future passports to be provided to Polish citizens. In compliance with the European Union recommendations, Poland started issuing electronic passports for their citizens by the end of August 2006. A successful pilot phase including over 3 000 diplomatic e-passports took place earlier this year, confirming Gemalto as the main supplier for the global roll out handled by the Polish Ministry of Interior and Administration. According to the Ministry of Interior and Administration, all new Polish passports needed to be electronically-enabled by the end of August 2006. The Polish Printing State Agency currently produces around 1.5M passports each year. Gemalto's Setec e-passport solution, enhanced by Setec secure technology, includes the company's highly secure operating system, with cryptographic features running on a large capacity contactless chip embedded in the booklet's back cover sheet. "Gemalto is delighted to contribute to the Polish e-passport program. Our co-operation with the national agencies has been extremely constructive and our common target to develop a secure and well-performing solution for the benefit of the country's passport holder exceeded expectations", said Jacques Seneca, President Europe at Gemalto. Many countries worldwide are expected to start nationwide rollouts of their biometric passports during the course of this year. With strong references and global footprint, Gemalto has the most complete product and service offer in the emerging identification market. Current e-passport references of Gemalto include the Czech Republic, France, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Sweden and the United States of America. To date, Gemalto has enabled more than 3 million e-passports with its secured chip-based technology. (x) Setec is part of the Gemalto group (acquired in 2005). The Setec solutions include products that require extreme security, such as biometric and visual passports, electronic and visual ID cards, driving licenses and health cards. About Gemalto Gemalto (Euronext NL 0000400653 GTO) is a leader in digital security with pro forma 2005 annual revenues of US$2.2 billion, operations in 120 countries and 11,000 employees including 1,500 R&D engineers. The company's solutions make personal digital interactions secure and easy in a world where everything of value -from money to entertainment to identities- is increasingly represented as bits and bytes communicated over networks. Gemalto thrives on creating and deploying secure platforms, portable and secure forms of software in highly personal objects like smart cards, SIMs, e-passports, readers and tokens. More than a billion people worldwide use the company's products and services for telecommunications, banking, e-government, identity management, multimedia content, digital rights management, IT security and other applications. Gemalto was formed in June 2006 by the combination of Axalto and Gemplus International S.A. For more information please visit www.gemalto.com Source: http://www.presseportal.de/story.htx?nr=867287

Interface planned with SARITA, so every time a house is registered or changes hands, the assessment department will get a prompt Kavitha IyerLOOKING to cast its property tax net as wide as possible, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is getting ready to keep an online eye on people taking home a nod from the civic building proposals department and on flat-owners getting property registered. The civic body’s e-governance initiative now includes building an interface with the SARITA software used by the stamps and registration department as well as with the office of the city survey and land records. That means, in a first for the country, every time Mumbai’s inspector-general of registration records a fresh property sale deed’s registration, the BMC’s assessment and collection department gets a prompt: A prospective new property tax assessee. ‘‘We’re trying to develop this interface,’’ said additional municipal commissioner Manu Kumar Srivastava. ‘‘It will streamline the registration of sale deeds with the inclusion of new property owners in our database of assessees.’’ Through SARITA (Stamps And Registration with Information Technology Application), citizens register documents including property transactions, access a web-enabled infobase of ready reckoner rates, compute stamp duty online, etc. Thanks to a scanning module, all registered documents are maintained in a huge database—about 1 million documents are registered in Maharashtra every year—in electronic form. Also proposed is an interface with city survey documents, so that any mutations in land records—change of zoning, change of title, instances of property passing on to heirs—are also made note of by the civic tax assessors. ‘‘That will enable us to know accurately whose name the next year’s property tax bill should be addressed to.’’ Permissions and formalities to access the database of other departments will take longer, but the online property tax payment system will be ready by October. ‘‘We propose to test it thoroughly for a month and then go online in November this year,’’ said Srivastava. Meanwhile, a core committee including officials of the assessment and collection department who are actively involved in the development of the software, are busy ironing out inaccuracies of the existing tax billing system. But there are serious roadblocks: The system being developed by ABM Knowledgeware Ltd is not web-enabled and requires to be replatformed. With the octroi department which nets 60 per cent of the BMC’s revenue already fully computerised—a paper-free octroi naka at LBS Marg, Mulund, is under tests for replication—an online payment gateway for property tax (it contributes 19 per cent of BMC revenue) will cause two of the BMC’s biggest grossing revenue streams to fit seamlessly into an interactive website with multi-payment gateways. Not So Easy * A series of bottlenecks are slowing down the ambitious e-governance initiative of the BMC. Two major revenue streams, the property tax billing system and the water billing system known as AQUA were passed by the Standing Committee last week for ‘‘replatforming’’. That means, the ready software requires enhancements to web-enable the system, to make it more user-friendly and transparent, according to Tata Consultancy Services, the BMC’s IT partner *‘‘This won’t really slow anything down,’’ says Additional Municipal Commissioner Shrikant Singh. ‘‘If anything, there could be delays caused by how fast we are able to supply data for the database.’’ For example, with an employee strength of nearly 1,40,000, getting all their details online for the HR department is a huge task requiring weekly review meetings. * The progress on other counts: The data centre in Worli, its civil works and air conditioning done, is waiting for the servers to be installed so that the HQ can be linked with various ward offices. The server is expected to be online by October-end. Source: http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=199069

Using tech to get down with the kids...By Steve Ranger MPs are trying to get young people interested in politics by using photo, text and video messages and posting on YouTube. The Citizen Calling project has been developed by the Hansard Society to help parliament explore ways in which mobile phones might support consultations. Messages can be sent to the project's phone number - 07786 201247 - and are hosted on the project's website. MPs on the Home Affairs Select Committee are using the trial to get views from young people about the criminal justice system. Its chairman John Denham MP has recorded a message - on a mobile phone - and posted it on YouTube and the Citizen Calling site. The committee wants young people to comment on their experiences of crime, and the factors that lead young people to break the law. The Hansard Society's director of e-democracy Ross Ferguson said many projects are created from the top down, whereas this one will allow young people to choose the best way to communicate. The "evidence-giving" session will start next week and run for four weeks. The society, which aims to promote effective parliamentary democracy, will then compare the usefulness of mobile routes to other web-based platforms and conventional, offline methods. Governments are increasingly looking at using new channels such as YouTube to get their message out - but not always with the best results. Earlier this week the Cabinet Office was forced to pull one of the public service videos it published on YouTube due to copyright violation. Source: http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,39161876,00.htm

By Daniel Pulliam dpulliam@govexec.comMark Forman, head of e-government and information technology at the Office of Management and Budget from June 2001 to August 2003, recalled recently how he just couldn't get through to congressional appropriators on the subject of electronic government. "I wish there were more than 24 hours in a day and 12 months in the year," Forman said. "We were talking about spending somewhere between $300 million and $500 million, split across 12 appropriations subcommittees. That's rounding error for most of the appropriations staff." Winning funds for the administration's e-government initiatives has been a constant source of frustration for OMB. Congressional appropriators and their staff members simply have not bought OMB's claims regarding the project's benefits. The 2002 E-Government Act authorized the creation of a central e-government fund. It was slated to receive $45 million in appropriations in fiscal 2003, $50 million in 2004, $100 million in 2005 and $150 million in 2006. But the fund, which was intended to provide seed money for a series of initiatives, never received the first $45 million -- or the second installment, or anything close to the figures above. In fact, Congress has never doled out more than $5 million annually for the fund, regularly blocking the administration's request to use excess General Services Administration funds to bolster its resources. In fact, they've repeatedly restricted interagency funding for e-gov projects. Appropriators, as it turns out, fume at the notion that OMB could order an agency to pay for projects led by another agency outside a particular subcommittee's purview. That amounts to usurping the role of appropriator, they say. Some agency officials, not surprisingly, also fail to share OMB's enthusiasm for the "pass-the-hat" funding model. Now, despite the fact that the House Appropriations Committee has acknowledged that OMB is doing a better job of communicating the benefits of the projects, several of the House versions of fiscal 2007 appropriations bills place severe funding restrictions on e-gov efforts. For example, language in the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education measure requires that any funding of an e-government program be approved by a career agency executive. The House's Transportation-Treasury bill requires OMB to consult with the Appropriations Committee before spending e-gov funds. While the Senate Appropriations Committee historically has been more amenable to OMB's e-gov funding requests, the Senate version of the fiscal 2007 Science-State-Justice-Commerce appropriations bill (H.R. 5672) contains the most severely restrictive e-gov language yet. The bill provides no money for the initiatives. E-gov efforts would be funded only if an agency determines that the funds are necessary and submits a request to the committee to reprogram funds from other agency activities, along with a detailed cost-benefit analysis. This documentation must be certified by the agency's inspector general. The requests also must identify any IT system, program or contracts being terminated in order to migrate to a centralized system. According to the bill's report language, the committee is skeptical of OMB's cost savings claims regarding e-gov initiatives. But despite past threats from administration officials to advise President Bush to veto appropriations bills that restrict e-gov funding, he has never actually refused to sign a spending measure. A staffer for a Senate Appropriations subcommittee said OMB still isn't able to show the benefits that agencies will get from their e-gov investments. "I'm not going to put $1 million into something if I'm only going to get $750,000 out of it," the staffer said. "I just want to know that the agencies under the [subcommittee] chairman's control are benefiting from them, and it doesn't just provide a press release for OMB." Outside assessments have at times reinforced appropriators' concerns about the administration's estimates. In 2003, for example, Linda Koontz, director of information management at the Government Accountability Office, testified that the Office of Personnel Management's claim that its e-government initiatives would save $2.7 billion over their lifetime was unrealistic. In response to appropriators' concerns, OMB issued a memorandum earlier this month asking agencies to begin documenting the savings associated with their e-gov participation. OMB officials acknowledge that the move may not fully allay lawmakers' concerns. And at any rate, focusing solely on savings misses the point of e-gov, said Karen Evans, OMB administrator for e-government and IT. Rather than projecting cost savings, Evans said the projects' business cases attempt to show the benefits of improved services made without additional cost. "So there is an increased cost right now as you're building out that functionality," Evans said. "[But] here are all the costs that we avoided. Technically ... that's not cost savings. But now you have an intangible benefit to the citizen for a brand new service that's never been offered." The Senate Appropriations subcommittee staffer said all that congressional appropriators want is independent verification of projects' costs. "If they really have savings, then they should have no problem with this," the staffer said. Source: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0806/083006eg3.htm

Texas, New Jersey win top spots for state sites Linda RosencranceAugust 30, 2006 (Computerworld) -- The federal Web portal FirstGov.gov and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's home page are the most highly rated federal Web sites, according to the seventh annual e-government analysis conducted by researchers at Brown University. The survey (pdf format) listed Texas and New Jersey as the best states for e-government. "FirstGov.gov was our most highly rated site this year, and the IRS Web site was rated sixth out of 61 government Web sites," said Darrell West, director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown in Providence, R.I. "There are a variety of different features that make them stand out. Those sites have a lot of online services, and they take issues of privacy and security pretty seriously. They are also generally bilingual and provide language accessibility to non-English speakers." West and a team of researchers examined 1,564 Web sites; 1,503 state sites (or an average of 30 sites per state), plus 48 federal government sites and 13 federal court sites. The evaluations of the Web sites were based on a number of features, including online publications, databases, foreign language content or language translation services, advertisements, user payments or fees, disability access, privacy and security statements, the number of online services available, support for credit card payments, e-mail addresses, comment forms, automatic e-mail updates, PDA accessibility, and readability level. "What we found over the course of the project is the steady improvement in the number of online services and how seriously government agencies are treating privacy and security," West said. "There still remain design issues -- a lot of agencies have their own look, meaning that it's hard for visitors to navigate those sites. So we suggest there needs to be greater standardization of government Web sites." West said every year the sites with the lowest rankings seem to be the court sites, and he doesn't understand why they're not getting better. "I think the problem is that courts are more insular, and they don't define public outreach as a really important mission for them, so they don't really have much in the way of online services," West said. "They don't put a lot of information online. They need to get a lot better at it." The survey found that most of the state Web sites prominently display key features and services on the main page or they provide a link to online services. The TexasOnline portal site has a simple, effective navigation system and an exhaustive list of more than 500 online services contained within its Web sites -- the most of all sites assessed, the survey found. The electronic services are divided into 15 categories and organized alphabetically, allowing for quick access to the most-wanted services, including online sales tax payment, vehicle registration renewals and searchable license records databases. In addition, TexasOnline features audio and video clips on the majority of its Web site, as well as a Spanish version of nearly every page, West said. "Overall, Texas has made a strong effort to deliver convenient access to a vast number of online services, thus topping our rankings," West said. New Jersey's Web site, ranked the No. 2 state Web site in the study, offers users the chance to personalize the portal page. Registered users of MyNewJersey can customize the site by selecting the layout of the home page and the news content displayed, the study found. New Jersey also provides easy access to online services via drop-down boxes that direct the user to common e-services such as paying traffic violations or searching unclaimed property. Furthermore, the site contains direct links to live online support and a form to e-mail the governor. Some states, the study found, do a poor job presenting their services, burying the most useful functions of their sites. The Wyoming portal page, for instance, has little mention of the services offered by the state's Web site, making navigation difficult, according to the survey. States could make their sites more user-friendly by providing quick access to e-services and useful features from the main departmental and portal pages, West said. Other findings include the following: * 54% of federal Web sites (up from 44% last year) and 43% of state sites (up from 40% last year) meet the World Wide Web Consortium disability guidelines. * 77% of state and federal sites have services that are fully executable online, compared to 73% last year. * 1% of state and federal sites are accessible through PDAs, pagers or mobile phones, the same percentage as last year. * 71% of state and federal Web sites have some form of privacy policy on their sites, up from 69% in 2005, and 63% have a visible security policy, up from 54% last year. * 30% of sites offered some type of foreign language translation, up from 18% last year. * 64% of government Web sites are written at the 12th grade reading level, which is much higher than that of the average American. After Texas and New Jersey, the highest ranking states include Oregon, Michigan, Utah, Montana, New York, Illinois, Indiana and Pennsylvania. The top-rated federal Web sites also include the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service, the Postal Service, the Department of Education, the Social Security Administration and the Department of State. Source: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9002863

by Sylvia LeathamEU project highlights e-gov barriers | South Korea is tops for EU project highlights e-gov barriers: An EU-funded research project has identified seven main barriers to successful e-government. The "Barriers to eGovernment" project, led by the Oxford Internet Institute, listed the stumbling blocks as leadership failures, financial inhibitors, digital divides, poor coordination, workplace and organisational inflexibility, lack of trust, and poor technical design. According to Professor Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute, the project findings are "shattering the very common view that there is one 'killer issue' -- a single major barrier to e-government. To the contrary, we are finding a wide range of barriers at many levels, from individual resistance to change to regional economic constraints." The three-year project also conducted a survey to identify the most prevalent barriers as perceived by e-government experts and users. These were seen as coordination across central, regional and local levels of government; resistance to change by government officials; and lack of interoperability between IT systems. For more information, see www.egovbarriers.org. EU aims to expand digital library: The European Commission has urged EU Member States to establish large-scale digitisation facilities and accelerate the process of getting Europe's cultural heritage online. In a recommendation on digitisation and digital preservation, the EU is calling on Member States to act in various areas, ranging from copyright questions to the systematic preservation of digital content in order to ensure long-term access to the material. By 2008, 2 million books, films, photographs, manuscripts, and other cultural works should be accessible through the "European Digital Library," the Commission said. This figure will grow to at least 6 million by 2010, but is expected to be much higher as, by then, potentially every library, archive and museum in Europe will be able to link its digital content to the online archive. The European Digital Library is a flagship project of the Commission's overall strategy to boost the digital economy, the i2010 initiative. More information on the European Digital Library is available here. South Korea is tops for e-government: South Korea has topped the chart for global e-government, in an annual study by researchers at Brown University. Asian countries dominated the top of the list, as they did last year, with Taiwan and Singapore securing second and third place, respectively. The US and Canada followed in fourth and fifth place. The UK ranked sixth, just ahead of Ireland, which was up two places from last year to seventh position. The study assessed the government websites of 198 countries around the globe in terms of a number of criteria, including disability access; the existence of publications and databases; the presence of privacy and security policies and contact information; and the number of online services. The report suggests a number of steps that governments can take to reach their full potential for accessibility and effectiveness. Governments should make their sites more user-friendly by improving site design. When governments have a portal page, the page should have links to other departments or ministries, the study says. Feedback forms, e-mail addresses, polls, and other means of communication are also vital to helping sites to cater to citizens' needs. Scottish NHS to provide emergency patient info: Scotland's National Health Service is set to introduce an electronic Emergency Care Summary (ECS) for every patient. The summary, which can only be accessed by NHS staff using a password, aims to make patient details available much faster than they can currently be accessed. The ECS will contain vital information such as name, date of birth, Community Health Index number, medication prescribed by a GP and any adverse reactions to prescribed medicines. "The Emergency Care Summary might be important if you need urgent medical care when your GP surgery is closed, or when you go to an accident and emergency department," said Health Minister Andy Kerr. NHS staff will have to seek the patient's permission before they can access the ECS, except in cases where the patient is unconscious or unable to give consent. The NHS plans to store and link up all health records electronically in the future. UK to benefit from discounted hardware: The UK public sector will now be able to purchase IT hardware at discounted prices of up to 45 percent, thanks to a deal struck by the Government and suppliers. The Office of Government Commerce and its trading arm, OGCbuying.solutions, worked together on the 'Great Deals' initiative to attract a total of 400 bids from pre-qualified IT suppliers for desktops, laptops and monitors. "With high-specification, quality laptops available at around STG430 and desktops at around STG280, this is a significant breakthrough for public sector customers and will save them time and money in the purchasing process," said Hugh Barrett, chief executive of OGCbuying.solutions. Barrett added that the specifications were designed to handle current proprietary software packages and subsequent releases. The Great Deals initiative will be re-assessed on a quarterly basis, said the OGC, to ensure that public sector customers continue to benefit from the most competitive products and pricing in the IT hardware market. Source: http://www.enn.ie/news.html?code=9783559

By Bae Ji-sook Staff ReporterA group of 15 diplomats from 11 Asian countries posted in Seoul visited a village in Hwasong County, Kyonggi Province on Tuesday to personally observe an information network village, held up as a successful model for Korea’s informatization drive in agricultural and fisheries region. The Hwaseong village is among the 280 information network villages being run across the country since 2001 as the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs’ key project designed to narrow the digital divide between rural and agricultural communities, regions and social strata and to boost competitiveness in agricultural and fisheries areas. The diplomats from Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore and Cambodia participated in the event, the ministry said. Earlier Tuesday, they made a call to Choi Yang-shik, deputy minister of the ministry, and received a briefing on information solutions to government innovation and administration as well as on the e-government and its achievement. They also watched the process of a resident registration being issued online via the Internet Civil Petition Service System. The ministry says the information network village is the main attraction for public officials from abroad who want to benchmark it, adding that some 1,100 officials from 60 countries have visited it since 2002. Source: http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200608/kt2006083020003511990.htm

Agencies now know what must be included in this year’s E-Government report.Last week, Office of Management and Budget Administrator Karen Evans issued a memorandum to all federal chief information officers explaining the parameters of the FY 2006 report. The E-Government Act of 2002 mandates the annual reporting. Like last year’s report, agencies are required to provide a brief overview of how they have implemented the Act and to describe the process involved for determining which information should be made public. This year’s report also requires agencies to describe how information dissemination policies are coordinated with Freedom of Information Act operations. The description must include a link to the agency’s Information Resources Management Strategic Plan and FOIA Improvement Plan. Agencies are required to post the annual report on their own Web sites by Oct. 20 and submit the link, along with the report, to OMB, which will compile the information for a report to Congress. Agencies will have an opportunity to review OMB’s draft before it is sent to Capitol Hill. Evans’ memo can be found at http://cio.gov/documents/FY2006_E-Gov_Reporting_Requirements.pdf.Source: http://www.fednews-online.com/view_publication.aspx?publicationId=9637