The official Web portal of the U.S. government has changed its name from FirstGov.gov to USA.gov. The official Spanish-language Web portal also has a new and improved name, going from español.gov to GobiernoUSA.gov.

The new names were announced by GSA Administrator Lurita A. Doan at a press conference January 18.

The name change was initiated by GSA and OMB to make official government information easier to find, according to Martha Dorris, deputy associate administrator for the GSA Office of Citizen Services, which manages the portals. Even though FirstGov.gov gets more than 80 million visitors a year, its name recognition was very low--only 4% of the respondents to a national survey knew it was the official U.S. government site. The name was cumbersome to say and difficult to remember.

On the other hand, "USA.gov" clearly describes the site. "USA" is the term that most people around the world recognize for the United States, Dorris said. It was identified in focus groups as the preferred name for the U.S. government's main website because it is intuitive, simple and easy to remember.

USA.gov is an award-winning, non-partisan website that accesses 50 million official U.S. federal, state, and local government web pages. It provides a single gateway to government information helpfully arranged by topic as well as by organization, and links to all state and territorial websites and many municipal sites.

During the past year, USA.gov has upgraded its offerings with a leading-edge search capability, a Web chat feature, RSS feeds, podcasts, a section specifically focused on State and local governments and a new gateway for foreign visitors.

GobiernoUSA.gov, USA.gov's sister site in Spanish, has over 900 external links and provides the 43 million member Spanish-speaking community access to more than 125,000 pages in Spanish from the federal government, 42 states, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and local government websites.

This month's DotGov Spotlight features the team that runs USA.gov, the official Web portal of the U.S. government, and GobiernoUSA.gov, the official Spanish-language portal.

USA.gov--formerly FirstGov.gov--is managed by a close-knit team of more than 30 communications (content) and technology experts in the GSA Office of Citizen Services and Communications who are passionate about providing government information and services to the public.

Bev Godwin, director of USA.gov Content and Web Best Practices, leads the content team; John Murphy, director of USA.gov Technologies, manages the technology infrastructure.

Together, they work to continually upgrade the USA.gov portal, a state-of-the-art website, so it always offers information about everything government provides, in an easy-to-use format, with links to every federal agency, every state and many other governments. Their goal never changes--it's to deliver accurate, timely and consistent information through easy-to-use features that help the public find what they want from government.

Bev Godwin's content team organizes USA.gov's and GobiernoUSA.gov's information in ways that make sense to the public--by audience (citizens, business, government employees, visitors to the U.S.) as well as by topic (e.g., "health," "benefits," "travel"), and market segment (e.g., students, parents, military and veterans, Americans abroad, and others). Her team is also responsible for website policies and procedures, web content, web design, customer segmentation and analysis, usability testing, benchmarking, and working with the technology team to identify new features and emerging applications that will be useful to the public.

John Murphy's technology team administers all the applications for USA.gov and manages the contracts that are required to provide the web architecture, applications and security support for the portal.

Over the years, these teams have brought many leading-edge features to the portal, including a powerful search engine, government-wide Frequently Asked Questions, ability to e-mail questions to the government in both English and Spanish, e-mail pages to a friend or sign up for e-mail updates, e-mail newsletters, RSS feeds, a government-wide photo library, a podcast library, content in Spanish and other languages, and most recently, live web chat. The United Nations, Brown University, Accenture and other organizations that ranked USA.gov among the very best websites directed much of their praise to the quality of the features as well as the organization of the site.

USA.gov has won over 100 awards. Godwin says the key to success is that the USA.gov team members listen to the public and think in terms of what is useful to their audience. They are most proud of winning the Innovations in American Government Award in 2003. "To me, this is the most prestigious award a team in government can win, and winning it was one of our proudest moments," Godwin said.

Godwin's career has been devoted to making government more citizen-centric. Holder of a bachelor's degree in Political Science from Columbia University and a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Michigan, she came to the federal government in 1982.

After serving as a budget chief in the Department of Health and Human Services, she joined the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) when it was created in 1993.

As deputy director of NPR working on a wide range of cross-agency issues, she was a leader in establishing the town hall meetings that NPR used to bring citizens' views on major issues directly to government. She was asked to bring her citizen-centered approach to FirstGov, the initial federal Web portal, and she moved with it to GSA in 2001.

Today, Godwin has high hopes for the portal, especially after achieving her long-time goal to change the portal's name from FirstGov to the more user-friendly USA.gov.

"I hope USA.gov and GobiernoUSA.gov will become household names," she said. "I know we have a lot to offer, and people are always amazed at what they can find at USA.gov. We have often heard people say, 'Wow! I didn't know you could do that online. Or 'I didn't know the government had that!' We want to make sure all Americans know these resources are available for their use--free of charge."

"I also hope--actually, I know--USA.gov and GobiernoUSA.gov will continue to improve as technology improves to meet Americans' expectations about what they want to do online with their government."

Murphy, director of USA.gov Technologies, came from the private sector to bring leading-edge information architecture and services that allow USA.gov to be citizen-centric. He leads the technical team that provides USA.gov's infrastructure and applications, and the related search services at USASearch.gov and GobiernoUSA.gov.

A graduate of Wake Forest University, he spent 25 years in banking and financial operations before joining the management consulting firm A.T. Kearney, where he managed consulting projects involving re-engineering, shared services, human resources, communications, and complex performance improvement initiatives. At Vignette Corporation, he managed software alliances with major industry partners.

Since coming to GSA in 2003, Murphy has been developing standard architectures and processes to meet many of the challenges of managing technical operations for government initiatives. Among them are the numerous organizations that oversee the federal Web portal--starting with GSA, OMB, the White House, and Congress; stringent procurement processes; and a long federal budget process. To meet those challenges, he began early on to stabilize funding for the operation, exercise strict control over vendor relationships, and develop skills in his team that enable an 'always forward' look at technology that helps the public.

"This isn't easy," he said. "Industry doesn't always get this right, as many are looking to next year's revenue stream," he said. "Government plans budgets approximately two years ahead of time and, while sometimes you feel like you need a crystal ball, the process makes you think ahead, which is actually a very good thing."

The USA.gov technical team maintains a three-tiered architecture using traditional portal technologies and a customized content management system that enables rapid information updates. The team plans and implements new features for USA.gov in response to advancing technologies and changing citizen preferences for how they want to obtain online information and services from government.

Murphy's team is also committed to providing the most sophisticated search function for USA.gov so that citizens can easily find the latest and most comprehensive government information across federal, state, local and tribal organizations. The team stays on top of industry trends to keep USA.gov "feature-rich" and provide visitors to the site with the best ways to get government information and services they need.

As leaders of the main federal website, Godwin and Murphy also influence the U.S. government's Web presence by providing lessons learned from their broad purview of the government Web space and the public's use of government information and services.

Four years ago, when OMB created the Interagency Committee on Government Information under the E-Gov Act of 2002, Godwin was appointed as one of its leaders. Leveraging many of her contacts in government she led a group of government Web content managers that proposed a set of recommendations that led to OMB's policies for federal websites. The group lives on in an interagency Web Content Managers Forum. Its listserv of over 1,200 federal, state and local web managers is invaluable to the spread of best practices throughout the government Web community. Godwin also manages Webcontent.gov and Web Manager University, where web managers access tools and training to continually improve their government websites.

"It is our goal to make all U.S. government websites the best in the world, and the collaboration among the web managers is making that happen," Godwin said.

Meanwhile, Murphy and Godwin continue to look into new ways to effectively distribute government content and services to the public. This may include syndicating content, that is, identifying the most useful information and delivering it to those intermediaries (schools, libraries, other portals, etc.) that deal with the public on a daily basis. "While USA.gov's original paradigm was to bring the citizen to the portal, that might not be the best way to get citizens what they need," he said. "Many citizens deal with their government through local sources, and if we can get our content to them through those sources, we'll feel that we've succeeded in connecting with them."

As they constantly search for new and useful channels between government and citizens, Murphy and Godwin are confident the future will afford even more opportunities to better serve those who want and need U.S. government information and services online.

The United Kingdom launched its 2006 annual progress report Transformational Government: Enabled By Technology with the news that at least 551 government websites will be cut to make access to information easier for citizens and businesses.

Of 951 government websites, only 26 will definitely remain and 551 will definitely close, according to the Cabinet Office, which issued the report January 10 and submitted it to Parliament. Hundreds of the remaining websites will likely close as well.

In the future, government information will be streamlined through two "supersites"--Directgov for citizen information, and Businesslink, for business information. Content from the closed sites that is still relevant will be transferred to Directgov and Business Link.

Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden said there had been a need to "deal decisively" with the proliferation of government websites, particularly "vanity" sites that do not serve a useful purpose. The site closures are expected to save the government about £27 million (about $53 million) over three years.

This is the first annual report in the implementation of the six-year Transformational Government strategy launched in November 2005. It covers progress across the three main themes of the strategy--customer-centric services, shared services, and professionalism.

The CIO Council has issued its Federal CIO Council Strategic Plan FY 2007 - 2009, signaling OMB's priorities for the Council through September 2009.

The plan outlines the Council's vision, mission, objectives, activities, and performance indicators as well as an accountability process in order to strengthen government-wide IT management practices.

It includes four strategic goals, a broad timeline for implementation and key performance indicators. The three CIO Council committees--IT Workforce, Architecture and Infrastructure, and Best Practices--will develop more detailed performance plans based on these activities.

The goals call for:

• A cadre of highly capable IT professionals with the mission critical competencies needed to meet agency goals.
• Information securely, rapidly and reliably delivered to our stakeholders.
• Interoperable IT solutions, identified and used efficiently and effectively across the federal government.
• An integrated accessible Federal infrastructure enabling interoperability across Federal, State, tribal and local governments, as well as partners in the commercial and academic sectors.

The plan was issued by the CIO Council Leadership Team, led by Clay Johnson III, deputy director of OMB and executive chair of the Council; Karen Evans, OMB administrator for e-government and IT and director of the Council; and Dave Wennergren, deputy assistant secretary of Defense and vice chair of the Council.

"We strongly encourage the active involvement of all council members in advancing our vision of a Federal Government that strategically, efficiently and effectively uses information technology to serve and protect our citizens," they state in an introduction to the plan.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has jurisdiction over national security, e-government, federal procurement and information policy, announced on January 18 its new organization and subcommittee chairs and rules for the 110th Congress.

The committee chair is Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). The ranking minority member is Tom Davis (R-VA). Subcommittees, their chairmen and ranking minority members are:

• Subcommittee on Domestic Policy
• Chairman, Rep. Denis J. Kucinich (D-OH)
• Ranking minority member, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)
• Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia
• Chairman, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-IL)
• Ranking minority member, Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-TX)
• Subcommittee on Government Management, Organization and Procurement
• Chairman, Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY)
• Ranking minority member, Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA)
• Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census and National Archives
• Chairman, William Lacy Clay (D-MO)
• Ranking minority member, Michael Turner (R-OH)
• Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs
• Chairman, John F. Tierney (D-MA)
• Ranking minority member, Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT)

The committee was formerly named the House Government Reform Committee.

The National Conference of State Legislatures' list of the top 10 public policy issues "likely to reach the boiling point this year," includes two that are important to the e-government community nationwide: homeland security and standardized ID cards (#2), and privacy (#9).

The list, released January 4 as regular legislative sessions began to get underway in the states, includes a mix of issues that are expected to "generate tremendous pressures on state lawmakers in 2007." These also include immigration, budget pressures, health insurance, sexual offenders, energy and environment, minimum wage, higher education reform and obesity.

The federal Real ID Act of 2005 is at the heart of the second-hottest issue--homeland security and standardized ID cards. States will have to spend at least $11 billion over the next five years to comply with the Real ID Act, which established national standards for issuing state driver's licenses and ID cards, according to NCSL. To date, the federal government has not issued regulations and has appropriated only $40 million for state implementation, despite giving the states a May 11, 2008 deadline to comply.

The CIO Council's IT Workforce Committee has completed work on its biennial revision of a set of core competencies for the government's IT workforce. The revised competencies were issued December 29.

Known as the 2006 Clinger-Cohen Core Competencies, these government IT workforce standards were first called for in the IT Management Reform Act of 1996, known as the Clinger-Cohen Act. These competencies and their associated learning objectives are designed to promote continuous learning and are updated every two years by the CIO Council.

"In the ten years since the passage of the Clinger-Cohen Act, and the inception of core competency requirements for the IT workforce, each subsequent review has broadened and deepened the baseline IT Management knowledge and skills required for a CIO's staff," committee co-chairs Janet Barnes, CIO of the Office of Personnel Management, and Ira Hobbs, now-retired Treasury Department CIO, said in a cover letter.

They pointed out that competencies were added this year for IT Portfolio Management, Records Management, Software Acquisition Management, Technology Management and Assessment, and Cross-Boundary Process Collaboration. They also enhanced the Information Security/Information Assurance competencies to reflect legislative requirements and information security standards, and increased emphasis on Earned Value Management, Privacy, and Information Sharing.

The revised competencies were written by representatives of 13 federal agencies, as well as industry and academia.

The Web Manager University, which holds both online and in-person training courses for government web content managers, has announced its spring class schedule, beginning February 21. The University is sponsored by the GSA Office of Citizen Services and Communications. Its website is managed by the Web Content Managers' Advisory Committee, which represents a national group of more than 1,200 government web content managers.

The Executive Committee of the National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO) has elected Iowa CIO John Gillespie and Minnesota CIO Gopal Khanna to serve as the association's vice president and secretary-treasurer, respectively.

The new positions reflect the departure of Nevada CIO Terry Savage, who had been NASCIO vice president since the annual conference in October.

NASCIO president, Michigan CIO Teri Takai, also named Nebraska CIO Brenda Decker and South Carolina CIO Jim Bryant to fill vacancies on NASCIO's Executive Committee.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) marked an important milestone--the one-millionth Web-based trademark application using its Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS).

Donald Junck, an entrepreneur from Sioux Falls, SD, filed the one-millionth electronic trademark application in November 2006, to protect his trademark, Bait Craft, which is used for fishing tackle boxes. He filed the online application himself. Junck was recognized in a USPTO ceremony January 17.

TEAS, launched as a pilot program in 1997, is now used for filing 94% of all new trademark applications. It has won the USPTO numerous awards and recognitions, including Excellence.gov and the prestigious Innovations in American Government Award (2000 semi-finalist).

The Industry Advisory Council of the American Council for Technology has announced 20 finalists for its Excellence.gov awards. They include nine federal civilian agency projects, four cross-agency e-gov initiatives and six military projects. The only non-federal finalist is the Justice Information System (JUSTIS) of the District of Columbia.

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Collaborative Expedition Workshop: Networked Improvement Activities Around Service Oriented Architecture
Arlington, VA
January 23, 2007

Ninth Annual Government Performance Summit 2007
Washington, DC
January 29-31

Conference on Designing Cyberinfrastructure for Collaboration and Innovation
Washington, DC
January 29-30

Department of the Navy Information Management & Information Technology Conference
San Diego, CA
January 30-February 2, 2007

U.S. Naval Institute/AFCEA International West 2007 Conference
San Diego, CA
January 31-February 2, 2007

IT Job Shadow Day
Washington, DC area
February 1, 2007

USA Services Agency Partners and Advocates
Washington, DC
February 13

Collaborative Expedition Workshop: SOA-based Identities Management
Arlington, VA
February 27

Braintrust International 2007 Knowledge Sharing Summit
Cambridge, MD
February 26-28, 2007

IPIC 2007
Orlando, FL
March 4-8, 2007

Community 2.0
Las Vegas, NV
March 12-14

FOSE 2007
Washington, DC
March 20-22

Collaborative Expedition Workshop
Arlington, VA
March 20

IRMCO 2007
Williamsburg, VA
April 29 - May 1, 2007

ACT/IAC Management of Change Conference
Richmond, VA
June 3-5

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The DotGov Buzz is produced by the following individuals in the GSA Office of Citizen Services and Communications:

Darlene Meskell
Ted Cogdell
Bryant Jones
Ernestine Ramsay.