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40–507 PDF 2009

S. Hrg. 110–894 

E–GOVERNMENT 2.0: IMPROVING INNOVATION, 

COLLABORATION, AND ACCESS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

DECEMBER 11, 2007 

Available via http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 

( 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

BARACK OBAMA, Illinois 

CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico 

JOHN WARNER, Virginia 

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire 

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Staff Director 

ADAM R. SEDGEWICK, Professional Staff Member 

BRANDON L. MILHORN, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

JOHN K. GRANT, Minority Professional Staff Member 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Lieberman ........................................................................................... 1 

Senator Akaka .................................................................................................. 25 

Senator Carper ................................................................................................. 31 

Prepared statement: 

Senator Collins ................................................................................................. 39 

WITNESSES 

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2007 

Karen S. Evans, Administrator, Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology, Office of Management and Budget ......................................... 3 

John Lewis Needham, Manager, Public Sector Content Partnerships, Google, 

Inc. ......................................................................................................................... 6

Ari Schwartz, Deputy Director, Center for Democracy and Technology ............. 9 

Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia ........................................................................ 12 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Evans, Karen S.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 3 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 40 

Needham, John Lewis: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 56 

Schwartz, Ari: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 9 

Prepared statement with an attachment ....................................................... 62 

Wales, Jimmy: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 12 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 85 

APPENDIX 

Questions and responses for the record from: 

Ms. Evans .......................................................................................................... 91 

Charts submitted by Senator Landrieu ................................................................. 96 

American Library Association, prepared statement ............................................. 113 

National Academy of Public Administration, prepared statement ...................... 117 

(1) 

E–GOVERNMENT 2.0: IMPROVING 

INNOVATION, COLLABORATION, AND ACCESS 

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2007 

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in Room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I. Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Lieberman, Akaka, and Carper. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. The hearing will come to order. Good 

morning and welcome to each of you. Thanks very much for being 

here. 

Five years ago this month, the President signed into law the E– 

Government Act of 2002—a bill that I was privileged to be a lead 

co-sponsor with a former colleague—Senator Conrad Burns. Another colleague who some of you still may be hearing about, Senator Fred Thompson, was involved in parts of the proposal. The 

aim of the bill was to bring the Federal Government into the Internet age so that we could better serve the public. The goal of the 

bill, as I said at the time, was to exchange the cumbersome, static, 

and often bewildering process for citizens to get information and 

conduct transactions with government agencies for a ‘‘dynamic, 

interactive, and user-friendly government.’’ 

Today we are going to ask how close the government has come 

in the ensuing 5 years to achieving that goal. As I see it in sum, 

much has been achieved over the past 5 years, but there certainly 

is a lot more that we can and must do. That is why Senators Collins, Carper, and I introduced legislation to reauthorize the E–Government Act, S. 2321, for an additional 5 years, and also to add 

some strength to it. One month ago, this Committee favorably reported the bill out, and I am optimistic that we are going to be able 

to move it through the Senate soon. 

Our first witness today, Karen Evans, is the Administrator of the 

Office of E–Government and Information Technology at the Office 

of Management and Budget, a position that was created in the 

original E–Government Act. Her testimony will provide an overview of what we have been able to achieve since passage of the Act, 

what challenges have arisen, and what the future goals are for E– 

Government. 

2 

We are also going to examine an important issue addressed by 

our reauthorization bill, which is that the public frequently cannot 

find information and services placed on government websites. It is 

a pretty basic problem. And the source of it is that information and 

services placed on many government sites, through practice or policy, are simply inaccessible to commercial search engines such as 

Google. Our bill aims to remedy this by requiring regular review, 

reporting, and testing across the Federal Government of accessibility to search capabilities. 

Two of our witnesses today, John Needham from Google and Ari 

Schwartz from the Center for Democracy and Technology will discuss this problem, why it exists, and what relatively simple steps 

can be taken to overcome it and vastly expand the ease of citizen 

access to Federal Government information. 

In this regard, our reauthorization bill may already have had an 

impact. Of course, in the normal processes of Washington, we will 

immediately take credit for this whether it did or not. Last week 

the Office of Personnel Management announced that it would make 

available to commercial search engines for the first time the listing 

of the 60,000 job vacancies that now exist in the Federal Government. That is significant. And it will have, we think, an immeasurable effect on the ability of people seeking employment in the 

Federal Government to use the Internet to find and apply for such 

positions. And it shows, I think, how easily we can dramatically expand access to possibilities and information in the Federal Government. 

Today we will also examine how new collaborative technologies 

can strengthen interaction among government agencies and the 

public. We are very glad to have as a witness Jimmy Wales, the 

founder of Wikipedia, one of the most thrilling examples of what 

collaborative technology can produce. We have asked Mr. Wales to 

take us through some of the ideas behind Wikipedia and then to 

relate them to our jurisdiction, which is to say to help us understand how similar technologies and collaborative activities can be 

applied to government for greater information sharing and communication, both within the government, but also between the government and the public. 

In fact, quite encouragingly, the intelligence community has already developed and is using a process collaborative technology 

that they call Intellipedia, which is based directly on the Wikipedia 

model. So Mr. Wales, if imitation is a form of flattery, you should 

feel flattered. And the aim of this is to foster collaboration and information across the intelligence community, obviously on a closed 

site. 

While our focus today is on the Executive Branch, I think it is 

also important to acknowledge that we, in the Legislative Branch, 

have a lot more that we can do better in this regard as well. 

In this spirit, Senators McCain, Collins, and I are today introducing legislation that will require the Congressional Research 

Service to make its extremely valuable taxpayer funded reports 

more easily accessible to the taxpayers. No method currently exists 

for the public to access these reports quickly and easily, though 

those who can afford to pay can now access them through private 

companies who gather them. Our bill would allow members and 

3 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Evans appears in the Appendix on page 40. 

committees to easily post all CRS reports on their websites so they 

are more readily available to anyone with access to the Internet. 

The Legislative Branch can also do a much better job of presenting information to the public about the status of bills and resolutions before Congress. We in Congress have access to a comprehensive website run by the Library of Congress, but the public 

site, known as THOMAS, is far less advanced. Furthermore, Senate votes unlike House votes are intentionally presented in a format that limits the public’s ability to examine Senator’s records 

which may be tempting, for sure, but not in the public interest. 

Incidentally, it is a bit silly too, because I can tell you that in 

Connecticut every Sunday in at least two of the major newspapers 

they print the votes of the Connecticut delegation in the preceding 

week. 

I intend to work with my colleagues and the Library of Congress 

to eliminate these blocks to transparency and accountability. So 

these issues are essential, I think, to the future of an effective and 

responsive government. These really quite miraculous technologies, 

which I find my children’s generation are taking for granted, yet 

still amaze me and they enable us to do things that quite recently 

we were unable to do. 

Just as the private sector has harnessed these new technologies 

to fuel its growth in an information-based economy, we in government have a responsibility to keep pace with the skill set of that 

up and coming workforce, as well as with the underlying new technologies, to meet our responsibility to the public. 

So I look forward very much to this discussion today. 

Our first witness is Karen Evans, Administrator of the Office of 

Electronic Government and Information Technology at OMB. 

Good morning, thanks for being here. We look forward to your 

testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF KAREN S. EVANS,1 ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE 

OF ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET 

Ms. EVANS. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for inviting 

me to speak about the current status of E–Government, the potential for collaborative technologies, and any remaining potential 

challenges for the future of E–Government Services. 

As you stated, this December 17 marks 5 years since the President signed the E–Government Act of 2002 into law. The passing 

of this Act was an acknowledgment of the rapid transformation the 

Internet and Information Technology has on the way citizens, private business, and government interact with one another. Currently, our efforts such as the Federal Enterprise Architecture and 

the Government Lines of Business are used to enhance collaboration among Federal agencies by aligning their business processes 

at a strategic level, which makes it easier for them to partner and 

work with one another. 

It is the challenge of getting these processes institutionalized 

which is one of the difficulties in getting agencies to collaborate 

and share information better. And it is also one of the remaining 

4 

challenges for E–Government, when looking ahead and attempting 

to transform services and get results. 

Before addressing what has been accomplished over the last 5 

years, I wanted to briefly update the Committee on the latest security and privacy metrics across the Federal Government. Title III 

of the E–Government Act, otherwise known as the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), calls for a comprehensive framework for ensuring the effectiveness of information security controls over information resources supporting Federal operations and assets. Our latest FISMA fiscal year 2007 fourth quarter report continues to show 88 percent of all major IT systems 

across the Federal Government have been certified and accredited, 

while 19 out of the 25 major agencies have Privacy Impact Assessments for 90 percent or more of the applicable systems. 

Overall, we considered FISMA to be successful in helping to meet 

the goal of improved information security across Federal IT systems and we will continue to work with agencies to increase security and privacy effectiveness, while at the same time managing 

risk to an acceptable level. We will be providing our annual FISMA 

report to Congress on March 1, 2008. 

Overall, good progress has been made toward achieving the core 

goals of the E–Government Act, namely to increase access to government information and services and to provide enhanced opportunities for increased citizen participation in government. Some notable examples of this are the Federal Internet Portal which is up 

and running at USA.gov. People can easily participate in Federal 

rulemaking process through Regulations.gov. And the process of 

doing Privacy Impact Assessments has helped to protect the personally identifiable information (PII) in the care of the government. 

Compared to 2002, there are now easy to use online government 

services that the public can access. More importantly though, people are using and embracing these services. 

USA.gov achieved an incredible 97 million visits during fiscal 

year 2007 or 1.87 million visits per week. This last year USA.gov 

also received numerous national recognitions for the quality and 

the effectiveness in providing government information to the public 

and was highlighted in July 2007 by Time Magazine in an article 

entitled ‘‘25 Sites We Can’t Live Without.’’ USA.gov now features 

multiple channels to allow citizens to contact them with questions 

about Federal Government information and services through the 

National Contact Center and through the new online live assistance chat features. 

GovBenefits.gov, led by the Department of Labor, empowers people to make decisions for themselves and their families by providing a single website to access information on more than a 1,000 

government benefit and assistance programs. GovBenefits.gov significantly reduces the amount of time individuals spend trying to 

identify and access relevant information about government benefit 

programs. By answering a few specific questions, individuals are 

better able to determine which government benefits they may be eligible to receive along with a description and contact information 

for each program. To date, GovBenefits.gov is receiving approximately 250,000 visits per month by citizens and has provided nearly 5.5 million citizen referrals to benefit programs. 

5 

State and local governments have also benefited from our efforts. 

The E–Government Act provides State and local governments the 

opportunity to use the GSA Federal supply schedules for automated data processing equipment, software, supplies, support 

equipment and services as included in their Schedule 70. GSA 

issued its final rule authorizing the acquisition of IT by State and 

local governments on May 18, 2004. 

Recently, under the SmartBUY Initiative, which is Software 

Managed and Acquired on the Right Terms, that leverages the entire Federal Government’s buying power. We awarded contracts for 

the latest security encryption products and services at discounted 

prices. This was the first time a SmartBUY agreement was extended to State and local governments, allowing them to leverage 

their purchasing power alongside the Federal Government, and allowing them to purchase the same products comparable to what the 

Federal Government has. 

When looking ahead, we see many of the presidential E–Government initiatives as foundational services, positioning the government to be more collaborative, transparent, and accountable 

through the use of information technology. Initiatives such as Regulation.gov provide an environment to allow for a collaborative approach, truly fostering E–Democracy, which brings citizen participation in government back to a more personal level. In fact, the 

purpose of many of the initiatives is to provide a more citizen-centered approach toward the delivery of government services so the 

people themselves are not just recipients but also active participants in how these services are delivered. 

Helping to further the goal of a more citizen-focused government 

will be the Federal CIO Council. Through this top-level coordination, the CIO Council will continue to play a key role in the future 

of promoting and working to implement the next generation of E– 

Government services which takes advantage of the successes and 

lessons learned from the past 5 years. The Council will leverage 

the presidential E–Government initiatives and lines of business 

which have matured and are ready to move to the next level of 

service for a more citizen-centric, collaborative approach toward the 

delivery of government information and services. 

Today people demand and expect electronic services from their 

government. The advancements in private sector in providing userfriendly and time-saving electronic services have shown that the 

public benefits from these capabilities. There is an expectation that 

the American people has for their government to delivery the same 

high quality services while also protecting their privacy. As I have 

discussed today, through highlighting several accomplishments 

that we have achieved over the last 5 years, the government is 

making significant strides toward meeting these expectations with 

the effective, collaborative, time-saving electronic services and providing citizens with increased opportunities to participate in government while managing the risk associated with these services. 

The E–Government Act of 2002 has proven to be a pivotal piece 

of legislation enabling the Federal Government to recognize and 

take action on the changes the Internet and information technology 

has on society and government. Reauthorization of the E–Government Act will further promote online access to government inforVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:22 Nov 06, 2009 Jkt 040507 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\40507.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
6 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Needham with an attachment appears in the Appendix on 

page 56. 

mation and services and show a commitment to implementing convenient and time-saving electronic services. 

In addition, a well-informed citizenry is essential to a healthy democracy and the new provisions on the best practices for the search 

functionality included in the reauthorization act will leverage the 

advances made in search technology to help ensure government information and services remain easily accessible by everyone. 

Last, the reauthorization will allow the intent and the purpose 

of the E–Government Act to continue to be a driving force behind 

increased opportunities for the American public to participate in 

the government. 

I would be happy to take questions at the appropriate time. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Ms. Evans. That was a very good 

beginning and we will have questions. 

John Lewis Needham is a Manager of Public Sector Content 

Partnerships for Google, Inc. 

I know I should not do this, but I feel I have a responsibility to 

my family and friends to ask whether you were at the Google wedding this weekend? [Laughter.] 

Mr. NEEDHAM. I had to be here, so I could not attend. [Laughter.] 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. OK. Very good. Thank you. 

Mr. Needham, thanks for being here. We are all great admirers 

and users of Google. We look forward to your testimony now. 

TESTIMONY OF JOHN LEWIS NEEDHAM,1 MANAGER, PUBLIC 

SECTOR CONTENT PARTNERSHIPS, GOOGLE, INC 

Mr. NEEDHAM. Thank you. Chairman Lieberman, Ranking Member Collins, and Members of the Committee, it is a great pleasure 

to be with you this morning to discuss Google’s role in making government more accessible to citizens. 

My name is John Lewis Needham. I am the Manager of Public 

Sector Content Partnerships at Google. In this capacity, I lead the 

company’s efforts to build public-private partnerships with government agencies in the U.S. and internationally. 

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make 

it universally accessible and useful. Making government information more accessible does not just help citizens find the content 

they need, it also enables the government to provide services more 

efficiently to taxpayers and makes our democracy more transparent, accountable, and relevant. 

This Committee has a long tradition of promoting these values, 

which Google shares. For example, Google Maps and Google Earth, 

which rely in part on government-provided geospatial data, can be 

used by the government to better serve its citizens. To offer two illustrations, the U.S. Geological Survey recently used Google Maps 

to show realtime data on earthquakes all around the world. And 

the National Park Service is using Google Earth to inform citizens 

about recreation opportunities across the country. 

This morning, I will focus my testimony on how people throughout our Nation are using the power of web search engines to find 

and interact with our government. First, I will share some trends 

7 

on how Americans connect with government online. Second, I will 

identify the challenges that citizens face in trying to find government information services on the Internet. Third, I will explain a 

technology known as a Site Map Protocol which enables government agencies to make their content more accessible to search engine users. And finally, I will highlight a few of our successful partnerships with government and outline steps that agencies can take 

to make their websites more accessible. 

Let me start by describing how citizens today are connecting 

with government information online. According to recent research 

by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, at least 77 percent 

of U.S. Internet users go online to find some form of government 

information. We also see that Internet users are choosing search 

engines like Google as their preferred way to connect with the government. 

To clarify, search engines work by sending a software program 

to ‘‘crawl’’ the pages on public websites, adding this information to 

our index. As a result, when a Google user types a query into the 

search box, we very quickly access that index to return relevant 

search results. Here is an example. The National Institutes of 

Health’s website, NIH.gov, offers a rich collection of public health 

and medical information from the 27 institutes and centers that 

comprise NIH. 

Let us say that you are trying to find out the status of a study 

on avian flu. You might not be aware of one relevant NIH service, 

which is located at ClinicalTrials.gov or how to get directly to the 

page that lists all current avian flu related studies. So you start 

your search on Google.com. This is a likely scenario, given that 

very few Internet users go directly to the NIH.gov website. In fact, 

according to our analysis of Internet traffic to NIH websites during 

July 2006, only 4 percent of visitors arrived at NIH.gov web pages 

through typing the address NIH.gov directly into their browser. 

This example is consistent with research by Google and others on 

the flow of Internet traffic, which indicates that as many as four 

out of five Internet users in the United States reach government 

websites by using Google and similar search engines. But if the information on a particular government website is not part of a 

search engines index, citizens are bound to miss out on that information. 

Search engines have made connecting to online government resources easier, but challenges remain. Specifically, we have found 

that many government agencies structure their websites in ways 

that prevent search engines from including their information in 

search results, often inadvertently. The most common barrier is a 

search form for a database that asks users to input several fields 

of information to find what they are looking for. Our crawlers cannot effectively follow the links to reach behind the search form. 

Let me offer an illustration. A citizen may be interested in locating the Environmental Protection Agency’s enforcement actions regarding a particular company. So that user conducts a search on 

Google.com with the company’s name and the key words EPA enforcement. The results of this search for EPA enforcement and a 

company name would include relevant information, obviously, but 

would not include information from the EPA’s Enforcement and 

8 

Compliance History online database which offers a list of enforcement reports for specific companies. This is because the information in this database, again this EPA Enforcement and Compliance 

History online database, cannot be included in a search engine’s 

index. 

Now EPA.gov is certainly not the only government website that 

search engines have difficulty indexing. In fact, we estimate that 

the information in all or part of 2,000 Federal Government websites is not included in search engine results. 

Now with all of that said, the good news is that there is a simple 

technical solution to address this problem. In 2005, Google introduced a standard called the Sitemap Protocol that helps ensure the 

accessibility of information on a website. It allows a website owner 

to produce a list, or map, of all web pages on the site and systematically communicate this information to search engines. When a 

Federal agency places a site map on its website, search engines can 

readily identify the location of all pages on the site, including database records lying behind a search form. Using this sitemap, search 

engines are more likely to index, and make visible to citizens, the 

information on the agency’s website. 

The Sitemap Protocol has been widely embraced by the search 

engine industry including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Ask.com, and 

others. What this means is that by implementing sitemaps, a government agency can ensure that it is serving the American people 

no matter which search engine they are using. 

Implementing the Sitemap Protocol is free and easy. It does not 

require site redesign, the purchase of new technology, or more than 

a few hours or days of the webmaster’s time. Implementation involves creating a list of web pages in an acceptable format and adding a file that contains this list to a website. Google provides a variety of tools to accomplish this task and we present them to public 

sector web managers at Google.com/publicsector. 

It is important to note today that I am only talking about information that is already public. Content that is maintained on internal websites, including personally identifiable and classified information, should not be made accessible through any search engine 

and is not the type of information we are working to index. 

We believe it would be technically simple for Federal Government agencies to produce a sitemap for the information on their 

websites and that doing so would bring significant benefits. And we 

know that implementing a protocol is easy to do because we have 

worked with many government partners at all levels to take this 

step. For example, the Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific 

and Technology Information operates a large database that makes 

research and development findings available to the public. OSTI 

developed a sitemap for its energy citations and information bridge 

services in just 12 hours, opening 2.3 million bibliographic records 

and full text documents to crawling by search engines. After its implementation of sitemaps, OSTI saw a dramatic increase in traffic 

to its services as more citizens discovered these resources. 

Other Federal agencies that have recently embraced sitemaps include the Government Accountability Office, which used the standard to make a database of 30 years of GAO reports visible to search 

engine users; the Library of Congress, which has made its AmerVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:22 Nov 06, 2009 Jkt 040507 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\40507.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
9 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Schwartz appears in the Appendix on page 62. 

ican Memory Collections easier to find; the National Archives and 

Records Administration, which is now in the process of sitemapping 

the Federal Government’s largest public database; and 

GovBenefits.gov, referenced by Administrator Evans, which now 

makes its profiles of over 1,000 benefit programs just one search 

away. And OPM, referenced by you Mr. Chairman, which is also 

taking the step of making its job postings more accessible to search 

engine users. 

At the State and local level, we have launched partnerships with 

the States of Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, Utah, Virginia, 

and with the District of Columbia. These partnerships are making 

it easier for residents to uncover job postings, reports on school performance, and the professional license records of contractors. 

The private sector long ago recognized the increasing importance 

of web search, but unfortunately the Federal Government lags behind. Last month this Committee took an important step in elevating the profile of these efforts by voting in favor of the E–Government Reauthorization Act of 2007. The Act directs OMB to create guidance and best practices for Federal agencies to make their 

websites more accessible to external search engine crawlers. It also 

requires Federal agencies to ensure their compliance and directs 

OMB to report annually to Congress on agencies’ progress. We 

commend Chairman Lieberman, Ranking Member Collins, and the 

Committee Members for their leadership on this issue and we look 

forward to working with you to enact this important legislation. 

Mr. Chairman, while my remarks today may have focused on 

websites and search engines, it is clear that in the years ahead 

government agencies will need to make information in other formats more accessible. In the Web 2.0 world, where more and more 

citizens are using blogs, wikis, online mapping, video sharing services, and social networking sites to communicate and collaborate 

with each other, there will be even more demand for government 

to bring information to citizens through these new platforms. 

We at Google are excited by the promise of this trend and we are 

committed to continuing to better connect government to citizens. 

Thank you, and I look forward to answering your questions. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Mr. Needham. 

Interesting testimony. It has framed the question that the Committee is very focused on, which is how to make publicly available 

government information easily accessible over a search engine. So 

we look forward to coming back to that discussion. 

Ari Schwartz is the Deputy Director of the Center for Democracy 

and Technology. Good morning. 

TESTIMONY OF ARI SCHWARTZ,1 DEPUTY DIRECTOR, CENTER 

FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank 

you for holding this public hearing on the future of E–Government 

and inviting me to participate. 

The hearing falls, as several people have said, almost exactly 5 

years after the passage of the E–Government Act. Unquestionably, 

the Federal Government’s use of Information Technology to deliver 

10 

information and services to citizens has improved over that time 

and the E–Government Act deserves some credit for ensuring these 

important improvements. 

This accomplishment is due in no small part to you, Mr. Chairman, and your work and the Members of this Committee, and especially to Ms. Evans and the work of her staff on implementing the 

E–Government Act. 

However, over the past 5 years, we have also learned a great 

deal from agency implementation of the law about what areas can 

be improved. Five years of experience, technological progress, and 

changes in user expectations should guide revisions to the E–Government Act to facilitate availability of resources to the public and 

privacy protections for the new technologies. 

In particular, I would like to discuss two major areas that we, 

at the Center for Democracy and Technology, believe could be addressed with a relatively minor amount of attention. 

The first of these is the area of accessibility of government information. This issue was addressed in the E–Government Act in several ways. For example, the Act called for the creation of a central 

government portal, now housed at USA.gov. The Act focused on 

standards of categorization for government information so that it 

could be more easily found. And the Act created several new means 

for agencies to work together to help deliver information services 

to citizens outside the bureaucratic silos. 

Simply put, the E–Government Act promotes the idea that citizens should not need to know what agency has particular information or services in order to find that information. 

Today my organization, CDT, along with our colleagues at OMB 

Watch, released a report that found that many of the newly created 

resources within agencies and across agencies are not available to 

individuals to find through the major commercial search engines 

and USA.gov, the very sources that the Pew Internet Life project 

says individuals are most likely to use to look for government information. 

Let me give three examples. The first, GovernmentLoans.gov, is 

a site that provides an easy-to-use central place to find, among 

other loans, all farm loans across the government. But if a small 

farmer were to enter the term ‘‘farm loans’’ or ‘‘government farm 

loans’’ into Google, Yahoo!, Ask, Microsoft Live, or even USA.gov, 

they would not find this important resource. 

In another example of direct relevance to the homeland security 

mission of this Committee, a search for the term ‘‘New York radiation levels’’ turns up some important information but does not 

find the most basic graph from the Homeland Security Department 

website that is directly available. 

Even more troubling, basic government support answers to questions such as ‘‘I am not allowed to visit my grandchildren, what can 

I do?’’ that are directly answered on the Department of Health and 

Human Services frequently asked questions page can only be found 

by digging very deep into the agency’s website today. 

As Mr. Needham explained, there are simple reasons why these 

searches do not find government information that is otherwise 

available on the World Wide Web. Either the agencies are blocking 

search engines from looking for this information, or they are not 

11 

taking proactive steps to allow the information in the database to 

be searched. 

Making this information available is not difficult; in fact many 

agencies have done so, including those listed by Mr. Needham earlier. We hope that other agencies will follow suit and that OMB 

will encourage them to do so. 

As more information is made easier to search, we are almost certain to find that some contain personally identifiable information. 

For example, when the government contracting databases were recently made more available, we found that the USDA was publicly 

releasing the Social Security numbers of their contractors. While 

this had been happening for years, it took the direct release on the 

Internet and easy searchability to find this clear violation of the 

Privacy Act. 

The E–Government Act recognized that making more information available online was certain to raise new privacy concerns, and 

in order to address this problem Congress took the bold step of requiring online privacy statements and Privacy Impact Assessments 

(PIAs) for all new and changed collections and new databases. 

The Privacy Impact Assessments were designed to provide greater transparency to how the government collects and uses personal 

information. Over the past 5 years, PIAs have become an essential 

tool to help protect privacy. They have been called one of the three 

pillars of the U.S. Government privacy policy. Unfortunately, as 

with other privacy laws, the Federal Government has unevenly implemented the most basic transparency requirements of PIAs 

across the agencies. The guidance issued by OMB pursuant to the 

Act with respect to PIAs was vague and has simply not provided 

agencies with enough information to successfully implement PIAs 

unless they already had privacy staff on hand. 

While some agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security, 

have set a high standard for PIAs and have continued to improve 

them over time, the lack of clear guidance has led some agencies 

to create cursory PIAs or none at all. We hope that the best practices on PIAs called for in the E–Government Reauthorization Act 

passed by this Committee already can be a starting point for OMB 

to begin providing more leadership on privacy issues. 

Even then, the transparency provided by the PIAs must not be 

viewed as a full solution on privacy. Congress must begin to address more fundamental privacy issues within government agencies 

to ensure the trust of the American people. This should begin with 

a review of the Privacy Act and a look into whether the law is adequate to address how the Federal Government uses personal information today. 

We look forward to working with this Committee to help address 

these critical privacy issues in more detail in the near future. 

Finally, I wanted to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your announcement today on efforts toward openness in the Legislative 

Branch as well as in the Executive Branch. In particular, CDT has 

been a champion of gaining greater public access to Congressional 

Research Service reports since they were rated the No. 1 most 

wanted government document in a report that we did in 1998. 

Since then, we have created the OpenCRS.com website to gather 

public reports, but the public should expect to get access to these 

12 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Wales appears in the Appendix on page 85. 

important policy papers in a more systematic way. Therefore, we 

look forward to working with you on seeing this resolution move 

forward and we thank you for your leadership on this important 

issue. Thank you very much. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Mr. Schwartz. 

I appreciate your mention of the CRS. It is quite a remarkable 

office, much larger than what most people would guess. And it has 

within it real scholars on an extraordinary array of subject matter, 

policy matters, and they do very high quality work. It ought to be 

public. It benefits us, but it ought to be public for all of the many 

people out there who would benefit from seeing the product of this 

very high level research. Thanks for your support for that. 

Mr. Wales, thanks for being here. We welcome your testimony 

now. 

TESTIMONY OF JIMMY WALES,1 FOUNDER, WIKIPEDIA 

Mr. WALES. Thank you. My name is Jimmy Wales and I am the 

founder of Wikipedia, as well as founder of the non-profit charity 

The Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts the Wikipedia project and 

several other related projects. 

I am grateful to be here today to testify about the potential for 

the Wikipedia model of collaboration and information sharing 

which may be helpful to government operations and homeland security. 

To introduce this potential, I would like to first talk about our 

experience with Wikipedia. The original vision statement for 

Wikipedia was for all of us to imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all 

human knowledge. That is what we are doing. 

Wikipedia currently consists of more than nine million encyclopedia articles in more than 150 languages. While the English 

project is the largest, with over 2 million articles, this represents 

less than one-fourth of the total work. 

Wikipedia is currently increasingly important around the world 

with more than half a million articles each in German and French, 

and more than 250,000 articles in several additional European languages, as well as more than 400,000 articles in the Japanese language. 

Despite being blocked in the People’s Republic of China for the 

past 2 years, the Chinese language Wikipedia, which is primarily 

written by Chinese speakers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and around 

the world, is a healthy community project with more than 150,000 

articles and a strong growth rate. 

At a time when the United States has been increasingly criticized around the world, I believe that Wikipedia is an incredible 

carrier of traditional American values of generosity, hard work, and 

freedom of speech. 

Now I would like to talk a little bit about how open, collaborative 

media like wikis enable more efficient gathering and dissemination 

of useful information. Although it may be counterintuitive that 

opening up a wiki project leads to a more useful compendium of information, that is what our experience has been with Wikipedia. 

13 

And I believe that experience can the same for government agencies and operations, as well. 

The method of production for Wikipedia is highly innovative. And 

in keeping with the old adage, necessity is the mother of invention, 

the story of how Wikipedia came to be is, I hope, both instructive 

and entertaining. 

Wikipedia was born of the famous dot-com crash. In the early 

days of the project, we worked together as a community with only 

a shoestring budget. If the financial climate had been better, then 

I would have likely turned to hiring employees to fill some critical 

functions. But because investment money and advertising revenue 

had completely dried up, we were pushed to find new solutions, solutions of community institutions to manage processes that would 

have been traditionally handled in a top-down manner. 

As a result, we pushed the limits of the new Internet medium 

to create a new kind of community and a new kind of encyclopedia, 

one controlled by volunteer administrators and editors working together in a grand global conversation to create something new. 

According to firms that measure Internet usage, Wikipedia is 

now the eighth most popular website in the world. And yet despite 

competing in some sense with companies with billions of dollars to 

invest, Wikipedia survives on an incredibly modest budget. Last 

year we spent around $1 million and although this year we are 

spending a bit more, our budget is still minuscule compared to that 

of most other tech enterprises, even if you limit the comparison to 

other top websites. 

The First Amendment plays an important role in this project, as 

do traditional American ideas of individual responsibility. Under 

U.S. law, everyone writing in Wikipedia takes responsibility for his 

or her own actions, just as it is true of everyone speaking in any 

public forum. The maintainer of this forum, the Wikimedia Foundation has set down some fundamental codes of conduct including, 

but not limited to what constitutional scholars call time, place, and 

manner restrictions. And I have personally imposed policies which 

strive toward respect for others, quality writing and the citing of 

sources. 

It is counterintuitive to some that an open discussion with virtually no top-down command and control structures can generate 

a high quality encyclopedia. Nevertheless, it does. 

To illustrate our success improving the quality of Wikipedia, we 

are currently celebrating a study published in the German weekly 

news magazine, Stern. According to this study, which just came out 

last week, Wikipedia scored higher in all but one categories than 

the standard German encyclopedia Brockhaus. The one standard 

we fell a little bit short on was readability. I promise, we are working on that one every day. 

Now given that Wikipedia is a public enterprise open to the entire public for collaboration and contribution, you may be wondering how wikis or the Wikimedia model may be useful to government. First of all, I want to note generally that there are other 

ways in which a wiki can be set up usefully, including set ups that 

do not involve opening the wiki to the general public. You can control access, and a wiki might be useful to an agency that wants to 

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creased vertical sharing. And controlled access wikis can be set up 

to share inter-agency information, so increased horizontal sharing, 

as well. 

The main point here is there is no requirement of necessity for 

the tool of a wiki to be open to the general public in order for it 

to be useful. The word wiki comes from a Hawaiian word wiki wiki, 

meaning quick. The concept of a wiki was originally created by a 

famous programmer named Ward Cunningham, who lives in Portland, Oregon. The basic idea of a wiki is quick collaboration. When 

people need to work together to produce some document, the only 

option in the old days would be to email around a text file or word 

processing document. The wiki represents a crucial innovation allowing for much greater speed. The most basic idea of a wiki is a 

website that can be easily edited by the readers, but modern wikis 

contain simple yet powerful features that allow for the users to 

control and improve the quality of the work. 

Wikipedia represents the power of a wiki open to the general 

public, but I believe the same wiki technologies that powers 

Wikipedia is also being widely adopted inside many enterprises. 

And I will note here in passing a couple of examples of this innovative use, one in private enterprise and one in the U.S. Government. 

First, consider Best Buy. Recently great companies such as Best 

Buy have been using wiki technology across the enterprise to foster 

faster information sharing and collaboration inside the enterprise. 

To give a hypothetical example of how this works, imagine the car 

stereo installer in a Best Buy store in Florida who discovers a faster or easier way to install a particular brand of stereo. This information can now be shared directly peer-to-peer to other stereo installers within the company across the entire store network. In the 

past, this kind of local information discovery was lost or isolated. 

One Harvard professor’s research suggests that one key to successful use of new technologies is adoption. The tools must be easy 

to use and valuable in the day-to-day life of those using them. 

Now I will take a quick look at Intellipedia. I am not an expert 

on intelligence gathering, so I will simply quote a useful resource, 

Wikipedia, regarding Intellipedia. The Intellipedia consists of three 

wikis. They are used by individuals with appropriate clearances 

from the 16 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community and other 

national security related organizations including combat and commands and Federal departments. These wikis are not open to the 

general public. 

The Intellipedia uses Mediawiki, which is the same software 

used by Wikipedia, and the officials who have set up the project 

say that it will change the culture of U.S. intelligence community 

which have been widely blamed for failing to connect the dots before the attacks of September 11, 2001. 

Tom Fingar has gone on record describing one of Intellipedia’s intelligence successes. Mr. Fingar told DefenseNews.com that a 

worldwide group of intelligence collectors and analysts used 

Intellipedia to describe how Iraqi insurgents are using chlorine in 

IEDs, improvised explosive devices. They developed it in a couple 

days interacting in Intellipedia, Mr. Fingar said: No bureaucracy, 

no ‘‘mother may I,’’ no convening meetings. They did it and it came 

out pretty good. That is going to grow. 

15 

As you can see, just as the dot-com crash forced private industry 

to think about more efficient and effective ways to use digital technology, the attacks on the United States forced our intelligence 

community to explore innovate ways to share intelligence among 

agencies. 

This brings us back to what might be called the lesson of 

Wikipedia, that an open flat forum allowing many stakeholders to 

participate can facilitate information sharing in an extremely costefficient manner and it can take advantage of a wider range of 

knowledgeable people than traditional information sharing processes do. 

Good democratic governments strive to be responsive to citizen’s 

needs. In order to do so, it is important that governments use technology wisely to communicate with the public and also to allow the 

public to communicate with the government. 

It is my belief that the government of the United States should 

be using wiki technology for both internal and public facing 

projects. As with any large enterprise, internal communications 

problems are the cause of many inefficiencies and failures. Just as 

top corporations are finding wiki usage exploding because the tool 

brings about new efficiencies, government agencies should be exploring these tools, as well. 

The U.S. Government has always been premised on responsiveness to citizens, and I think we all believe good government comes 

from broad, open public dialogue. I therefore also recommend that 

U.S. agencies consider the use of wikis for public facing projects to 

gather information from citizens and to seek new ways of effectively collaborating with the public to generate solutions to the 

problem that citizens face. 

Thank you for inviting me to testify about the potential for the 

Wikipedia model to improve our government’s ability to share and 

gather information for increased security, for increased governmental responsiveness in our open society, and for the preservation 

of democratic values. Thank you. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Mr. Wales. That was great, and 

necessity mothered a great invention. 

I love the story of the founding of Wikipedia. And if I may say 

so, and I appreciate your saying that in some ways, it is classically 

American. And this is a part of American history, part of the American experience that goes right back to the beginning. It always 

struck me as instructive, that among the founding generation of 

Americans were some remarkable inventors, beginning with Franklin and Jefferson. And obviously this continued, in many ways, 

throughout our history with the extension of the American frontier 

and all of the advances that have occurred since. 

But you have really done that, along with your colleagues, in this 

age. And so I thank you for it. 

And I thank you for the suggestions that you have made about 

how this collaborative technology can help us, in government, do 

our job better. I want to come back to that in a few minutes. But 

let me start with this question that we were focused on in the reauthorization, which is the problem of access through search engines. 

Mr. Needham, you testified that in whole or part, there are 2,000 

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gine results. And I wanted to ask you why, and to expand a bit on 

what you said. I know you had a reference to EPA and NIH. But 

is it accidental? Is it that they are not going the extra mile to make 

this happen? Or is there some policy? Or is it plain laziness that 

is bringing us to a point where we should not be? 

Mr. NEEDHAM. Right, happy to speak to that. 

So I think the principle factor that we can look to is that governments produce lots of information and have a mandate to disseminate that information. And to do that, agencies rely on large databases to hold public records and present government programs to 

citizens. So that is one factor, lots of information, hard to disseminate it efficiently. 

But these databases, the EPA example I gave and many others 

that I could point to at the Federal, State, and local level. They 

typically present to the user a search form by which that user then 

types in key words to find the report they are seeking, or the 

record or what have you. These search forms cannot be navigated 

by search engine crawlers. We cannot reach behind to see what is 

there and add those records to our index. 

And because, as we have experienced in our communication with 

agencies, they tend not to think as much about how citizens are 

going about finding information but rather about how their website 

is presented to citizens, they have not taken, by and large, this 

step of providing us a means of finding those records behind that 

search form. And that is what the Sitemap Protocol technology enables. It provides the agency a simple mechanism for pointing out 

to a search engine crawler, these are all of the records in this database, come here and crawl them. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I appreciate the answer. So you have now 

created a tool that should make it much easier for Federal Government websites to be included in search engine results. 

Let me go back to you, Ms. Evans, and ask you if you want to 

add at all to Mr. Needham’s answer about why some agencies have 

not made their web pages available to commercial search engines? 

Ms. EVANS. Well, I think Mr. Needham hit on the first issue 

about it is a lot of information and therefore we try to figure out 

the best way to efficiently deliver it, which is through databases 

and organization that way. 

The other part, which Mr. Needham has also highlighted, is the 

partnership that we need to work out with commercial search capabilities, because many times when we start delivering these next 

level of services, what we have also done is streamlined the support 

services associated with those. 

So in talking with Google and other search companies, we try to 

present the information in a context. We may not be doing it in the 

most efficient way to provide a context around it. For example, on 

GovBenefits.gov, when we initially talked, we have a whole support 

mechanism behind that. So we try to filter so that we do not create 

frustration in the citizen as well and present a whole series of results to them. And what they do is they see what they are basically 

eligible for. 

Now what we need to do is work in partnership, which is what 

your reauthorization allows us to do, is that there is a balance between us trying to streamline our backline and making sure that 

17 

the citizen really knows what they are eligible for and also making 

the information commercially available to the search engines, because it is all out there. We just want to make sure that we are 

providing it in a context so that we do not create more frustration. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. So leaving aside matters that we might 

not want to have easy access to, because of privacy concerns or 

classification, is there any other policy reason that would justify 

limiting access to otherwise publicly available information on Federal websites through search engines? 

Ms. EVANS. No, sir. The way that we have put together the policies, but we would need to go back and relook at that to see of any 

agencies may be interpreting it that way. But the way that the policy is based on the current E–Government Act, it is for greater dissemination of public available information. And then also, the Administration has passed an Executive Order, again supporting the 

Freedom of Information Act, saying look even further at your information and make this available before it is asked for. 

So that information is out there. But we do have to do it in a 

way that it is easily accessible through the means that citizens research and look for the information. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I appreciate that answer because that is 

certainly our intention, that except for privacy and classification 

reasons, everything else should be maximally and as easily as possible available to the public including through search engines. 

Mr. Schwartz, do you want to add anything to this discussion? 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. I think Ms. Evans made a good point about the 

context issue. I think it is an important one. But I also think that 

the American people are smart and they know how to use search 

engines. While it may be frustrating a few people, we do not want 

to block information from the vast majority of people who would be 

able to figure out the context and use that information. For the minority of people that cannot figure it out, that might be frustrating, 

but at least they have an opportunity for access. 

So I think that there is sort of a balance there of how do you give 

the right context but make the information as maximally available 

as possible and maximally searchable as possible. 

Mr. NEEDHAM. If I may add a comment on this, as well. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Please. 

Mr. NEEDHAM. We worked with the State of Arizona earlier this 

year to open up eight of their major databases, which were not initially designed to be crawled by search engines. And the pages that 

they present to users, indeed may not be utterly clear to the user 

on first blush, but they did so. They opened these databases. And 

as we indicated in a report we published or a case study we published yesterday on this website I referenced, Google.com/publicsector, the administrators of these agencies, whose databases were 

opened, are very pleased with the results of citizens for the first 

time learning about, for example, license record of contractors and 

of real estate developers, and so forth. So we know it can work because we have seen it work. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good. That is a good example. Mr. Wales, 

do you want to get into this? 

Mr. WALES. Yes. Actually, in many cases we have heard about 

the difficulty when the web crawler comes to a form and they have 

18 

to, instead of clicking on something that says Alabama, someone 

would have to type in Alabama and the search crawler is not able 

to figure out what to type there. 

But we actually find even in the Wikipedia context, which is 

written by human beings, that there are some websites that even 

when you type in the right thing and you submit and you get the 

information you want, you cannot link directly to that. And so 

someone who is writing something, trying to explain something, 

and they want to link to a particular statute or a particular regulation or a particular piece of information that has been published by 

the government, if they are not able to cut and paste that URL and 

put it into Wikipedia, then even with a human involved it is very 

frustrating. The only thing you can do is give someone instructions. 

Go to this page, type in this, select the third link. It can be very 

frustrating. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is a good point. Ms. Evans, do you 

want to respond? 

Ms. EVANS. Well, all I can say is that we are very open to making this more collaborative. We have examples, and I would like to 

actually share one, that we are embracing this technology and we 

are using it more ourselves. The EPA was raised as an example 

here of not making information available. But they recently held 

what they called the Puget Sound Partnership where they went 

and for 36 hours they worked directly out there trying to figure out 

how to do the information, using the technology. What parts of 

their information were not easily accessible? Could they set up 

these pages? Could they do all that? 

We are taking those lessons learned there. Molly O’Neill from 

EPA, the CIO from EPA is sharing that now with the other CIOs. 

So that we can take these types of things and the frustration of the 

information that we are putting out there and then try to fix it so 

that we can make sure that it is readily available. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. OK. That is an encouraging example. 

As you know, Section 204 of the E–Government Act required the 

development of an official Internet portal that would be organized 

by function or topic instead of the boundaries of agency jurisdiction. That is USA.gov which now receives, I gather, almost 1.9 million visits per week. 

I wanted to ask you if you have done any work that would enable 

you to tell us how you think a user’s experience is enhanced by 

using USA.gov instead of attempting to find their information 

through search engines? 

Ms. EVANS. Well, the way that USA.gov is set up—GSA really 

manages this very well, at least we think they manage it very well. 

They do hold user focus groups constantly throughout the year to 

really measure the customer experience, the citizen experience and 

how to reorganize it. 

This is a good example of us and our interpretation of putting 

the context around the Federal Government information and then 

trying to give the citizen an enriched experience when they come 

and that it is the authoritative source for the Federal Government 

launching off of there, that you are going to authoritative sites. 

They did a lot of market research, it used to be called 

FirstGov.gov. They did research just in the name itself and 

19 

changed it based on their market research and changed it to 

USA.gov. And just the simple name change of that increased the 

usage by 67 percent. 

So they are constantly looking at customer satisfaction. All of the 

E–Government initiatives are measuring customer satisfaction 

usage. And then as well as how we can go back and really deploy 

it and improve it and we make all of those metrics publicly available. 

So we set targets. Several of the initiatives may not necessarily 

be meeting their targets. But we do set the targets and the metrics 

and we do publish our actual performance against those metrics. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Do you think enough people know? The 

numbers are pretty good obviously, but do enough people know and 

take advantage of the service that USA.gov provides? 

Ms. EVANS. I think that if I had—I do it myself. So I will be honest—I go to Google and then I go to USA.gov when I am looking 

for specific things. But I launch into Google or Yahoo! or Ask.com, 

just like anyone else does. Because I want to see how my services 

come up. 

But I will tell you that the other benefit to having the government initiatives such as the Federal Internet portal and USA.gov 

was those services were available when crisis and things happen 

within the Federal Government that we have to mount an immediate response because the infrastructure is already there. 

USA.gov, because of its integration of the services, was able to provide support services to the State Department like answering passport questions. They can build out that and complement what the 

State Department is doing. 

As a matter of fact, they actually answer all of their calls now. 

We get a common set of answers because USA.gov is tied into every 

agency, so they handle all of the misdirected e-mail. So if anybody 

does write directly to a department or an agency, it is automatically routed to their set of agents so that they can answer the questions on a consistent basis. 

So there is a lot of integration of back end office types of services 

that we have done through these government-wide initiatives that 

when something happens like the VA situation where we lost that 

data, USA.gov and those services built up within 48 hours. They 

had the capability and they put all of that information out on their 

website. They had RSS feeds set up, which are automatic sign ups 

so that people can get the update of the information as we changed 

it. And we also had 1–800 service so that we could answer 240,000 

calls a day for the veterans. 

So we tried to put all of that together as an integrated channel 

so that we are providing the solutions to the citizens. So it is a 

more complicated question than does everyone know USA.gov? 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I will tell you that in preparing for the 

hearing we went to Google and typed in Federal Government, and 

USA.gov came up first in a number of listings. 

Let me go to another provision of the E–Government Act and see 

if I can start a discussion with the four of you, but I will start with 

you, Ms. Evans. In one provision of that Act, we require the development of a system for finding, viewing, and commenting on Federal regulations. This was really a step forward, obviously. The 

20 

goal was not just transparency, but real accessibility to give individual citizens the opportunity that they would find very difficult 

under the previous technology to both see proposed regulations, 

gain access to them easily, but actually then to comment on them. 

From what I can see, while there has been progress, I have been 

disappointed that the development of Regulations.gov has not 

opened up the rulemaking process to a greater degree. CRS, which 

we referred to earlier, recently reported, ‘‘It still appears that relatively few comments have been coming to the agencies via Regulations.gov compared to other methods of comment.’’ 

Further, in relation to what we have been discussing today, the 

data in Regulations.gov cannot be found by outside search engines. 

So give us your status report on how Regulations.gov is doing 

and tell us whether you agree that more needs to be done to facilitate public access to tracking and ability to comment on regulations. 

Ms. EVANS. Sir, the short answer is yes, sir, more needs to be 

done on Regulations.gov. 

The other part of it is about searching and doing the docket systems that are back within the agencies and making that information available. Again, this would be one where we would have to 

partner with commercial search providers about the best way to 

make that information available because we know that is a limitation right now within it. 

Agencies do have to post all of the regulations, proposed rules at 

Regulations.gov, but what we wanted to do was make sure that the 

public had the availability to comment through multiple channels. 

So the comments can go directly to an agency, not necessarily all 

comments have to come through Regulations.gov. And that was 

flexibility that the agencies still wanted to maintain. 

Some of the things that are being looked at with Regulations.gov 

because this is really not a technology issue. This is really looking 

at how do we want the business of rulemaking to evolve? Some of 

the basic things that I have asked as the technology is going forward is do more comments make a better rule? 

Those are things that I think the way the technology is working 

and that you see through the development of functions like 

Wikipedia that there are arguments on both sides of that. And that 

is what needs to be looked at. We are in partnership, we jointly 

manage that with the OIRA Administrator, Susan Dudley. And 

these are things that she is embracing because she does want more 

transparency, she does want more openness in the regulation process. And so we are working with that. 

There is an ongoing study right now with the American Bar Association that we have been meeting with them of improvements 

and requirements, some things that we can do to Regulations.gov 

that would just make it easier to use so that more people would 

want to put comments in there, as well. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Mr. Wales, would you say, based on the 

Wikepedia experience, that as a matter of policy or that we could 

conclude that more comments would make better rules? 

Mr. WALES. I think so, yes. But I think one of the interesting 

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nology is rather than just commenting, people are collaborating 

and finding ways to compromise. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes, good point. 

Mr. WALES. And so, there are some very practical problems, of 

course, that are faced with open commenting, spammers, crazy people, and all kinds of bad behaviors. And you have to think how do 

you balance the desire for allowing the general public to comment 

and not to censor their remarks because maybe somebody does not 

agree with them versus well it is not censorship to say, links to 

Viagra advertisements is not really a comment on most regulations, anyway. 

And so, I think that these things do take very careful study. People can be very simplistic and say well they, should allow the public to comment on regulations. Well, sure. But how are we going 

to help the public to come in as a part of a responsible community 

and do that in a way that everyone finds useful. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good, thoughtful answer. Mr. Needham, 

any thoughts about this question about how we can improve basically Regulations.gov? 

Mr. NEEDHAM. Well, you are correct, that this is an example of 

an E–Government program website, among the many that I have 

referred to, that are not visible to search engine users. And this, 

I think, is more of a comment on the USA.gov discussion earlier, 

that let us say that someone is a farmer that grows tomatoes in 

Florida is not too plugged into the regulatory process that governs 

that industry and searches on Google for ‘‘tomatoes transport.’’ If 

this resource were crawled and indexed and integrated in search 

engines, including USA.gov, this grower might be more engaged in 

that regulatory process, learn that there is, in fact, a rule that is 

under comment. 

And the point being made here is that not every citizen realizes 

when they are looking into their health, their business, education, 

or housing, that government provides a service that is relevant. 

And that is why it is critical that all of the information of the Federal Government that is public be in all search engines possible 

and not simply through USA.gov, where a user is consciously looking for information from its government. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Well said. Mr. Schwartz. 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. I want to take on two different points there, the 

first one that Mr. Needham just raised. In terms of when we first 

did our report looking at what kinds of searches were not coming 

up, it was during the polar bear comment period that the Interior 

Department was having, that had more comments than any other 

commentary. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Whether the polar bear was going to be 

listed as an endangered species? 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. Exactly. And we did some searches on that and 

you could not find that on any search engine at all. It was one of 

the first things that really got us interested in this issue. This was 

one of the best known comment periods in the history of the Federal Government. I mean, the most activity in terms of comments 

and you could not find it on a search engine, except for going 

through secondary parties. And part of that was because it was not 

on Regulations.gov. 

22 

Eventually GPO sitemapped their site and then you could at 

least find it through GPO. But that is just one example. You know 

there are people that are searching for this in a way that, where 

they hear on the news that there is a comment period on whether 

the polar bear should be endangered species and they want to comment. They go to search on Google, they do not get the result that 

they expect. 

Regulations.gov shows that concern very acutely. 

I want to follow a little bit on Mr. Wales comments and Ms. 

Evans comments about Regulations.gov. We were hoping by this 

point that we could be at the point where we were trying out new 

technologies for regulations and public comment periods. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. What were you thinking of? 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. I mean, using the wiki model. A lot of people 

would think of it as, oh you just put up a rule and then people go 

and attack it and you get both sides. But the really interesting 

thing about what happens on Wikipedia is the commentary pages 

and the notes pages, which are much more similar to a traditional 

rulemaking than you would think. 

If you go through and look through how they go about making 

determinations and people giving justifications based on facts and 

what the rules are for how that is done, I think we could learn a 

lot from just trying out new technologies. Not saying that it should 

supplant the old ways of rulemaking. But perhaps we can, in certain kinds of rulemakings, we can come up with a more collaborative discussion rather than the traditional conflict policy that 

kind of governs public comment periods today. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is very interesting. 

You know there is another institution around Washington that 

needs more collaboration to be effective, Congress. Maybe we 

should all form a Congressipedia. 

Another thing we do not do here, if I may continue this particular flight, gaining now with the welcoming our colleague from 

Hawaii. You told us the word wiki is Hawaiian for quickly, that 

one thing that we do not do enough around here is to legislate 

wikily. So anyway, I welcome Senator Akaka. 

I am going to ask one more series of questions and then I am 

going to yield to you, Senator Akaka. Thanks for being here. 

I want to go directly to you, Mr. Wales, and thank you again for 

being here, to take up one of the—I guess it is a criticism, a skepticism about Wikipedia, which is that inaccurate content can result 

when larger numbers of participants outweigh the contribution of 

a few experts. 

In your testimony, you said that controls or kind of management 

devices can be put in to provide—I like the term—fine grain control 

to access and edit information. And I wanted to ask you to elaborate on that, particularly, but generally with regard to Wikipedia 

but also as it may effect collaborative technologies to be used by 

the Federal Government. 

Mr. WALES. Absolutely. So within Wikipedia, the software, the 

Mediawiki software that we use puts several tools into the hands 

of the community so that they can manage the quality of the content. Within the community, there are administrators who are 

elected from the community and they are generally chosen after 

23 

they have proven their worth over a period of time in terms of 

being good writers, thoughtful editors, kind and helpful to others, 

the kinds of values that we look for in an administrator. 

And the administrators have the ability to do things like temporarily lock pages. We can do that in a couple of different ways. One 

of the ways that has been very successful is what we call to semiprotect a page, which means anyone can edit that page as long as 

they have been around and had an account at Wikipedia for 4 days, 

a very low threshold for entry into participation. But this really 

helps us in cases where a particular article has been highlighted 

in a news story or something like this and there are a lot of newcomers coming in and things like that. 

Certain articles on very controversial topics tend to be semi-protected pretty much all of the time. An example would be George W. 

Bush, for example. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right. Let me understand, this is really 

interesting. The administrator is empowered to essentially make a 

judgment call if the administrator thinks that a page may be subject to piling on or any thing else, because it is controversial? 

Mr. WALES. That is right. And a lot of times we try to keep this 

to be something of a cooling off period. In other words, something 

has been in the news, we will semi-protect it for a few days until 

everybody relaxes a little bit. And there are over a 1,000 active administrators in the English Wikipedia. And of course, they have 

conversations and discussions and disputes amongst themselves 

over whether things should be protected or unprotected. 

Occasionally some brave soul will say I think we should 

unprotect the George W. Bush article, they unprotect it, and say 

I will watch and make sure there is no vandalism. And usually 

about 6 hours later they are exhausted and protect it again and go 

to sleep. 

So there are some areas of high potential for pranksters and people like that, that end up semi-protected most of the time. 

We also have the ability to block IP numbers. So if there is some 

form of misbehavior and where it is coming from—the typical case 

would be a high school, a parliament building, this sort of thing. 

That’s a joke, actually, although it has happened. 

We will see some sort of juvenile behavior. And normally what 

we do in a case like that, is we just simply block that IP number 

from editing Wikipedia for 24 hours or so. Hopefully that will just 

calm them down. So that is another sort of tool in our pack. 

We have things like recent changes, so there are people who 

monitor every change that is coming in. Individual users have personalized watch lists. So if you are a particular expert on birds, for 

example. I met a scientist at Cornell University who is an ornithologist. He monitors a lot of the bird articles. He does not have 

time to do it personally everyday, but about once a week he said 

he comes in and checks out a lot of the bird articles. And he can 

quickly look at the change, just the change in the article. Rather 

than him to reread the whole thing from scratch, he can quickly 

see what has changed since the last time he has been there to 

make sure it seems suitable to him. 

So all of those kinds of tools are important, but probably one of 

the most important tools of all is that the entire history if every 

24 

article is kept in the database with very rare exceptions. Occasionally, we completely delete things from the database, privacy violations or other legal reasons. But typically if it is simply a bad 

version of an article or something like that, the old versions are 

there. And so if somebody comes in and begins to damage an article, it is typically one click for anyone to go back in and save the 

previous version as the current version. And so it is hard to do any 

damage at Wikipedia. Whenever you come in and make a change, 

you are actually just creating a new version. And if you have done 

some harm, someone can quickly come behind you and fix it. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Very interesting. I presume though, it is 

a different kind of activity that you would say some of those methods you have for protecting the integrity of the system are also relevant for collaborative technologies used by the Federal Government? 

Mr. WALES. Absolutely. Some of these techniques are not necessarily as useful in internal facing wikis. If you have an internal 

wiki and everybody who is editing it is logged in and they are an 

employee, typically you do not need to block them from editing. You 

fire them or whatever you need to do to tell them to stop misbehaving. 

But other of the tools, for example, the history. You can easily 

have people who disagree and someone will say you made these 

edits to this article, but I do not feel that it really improved it. I 

am going to go back to the previous version and then let us go to 

the talk page and hash this out. 

So these kinds of tools are applicable for internal wikis and external, but a lot of the concepts may be valuable outside even the 

wiki framework. The idea of understanding that if you can generate a thoughtful community, you can have that community do a 

lot of the policing that otherwise it would not be cost effective to 

do. 

A similar example would be Craig’s List. People post advertisements there, free advertisements. And the staff at Craig’s List is 

really too small to really supervise and monitor everything. But 

their community can simply, if you see something that is spam or 

is somehow inappropriate, they can simply flag it and if it gets 

flagged a certain number of times it just disappears. Overall, this 

does a pretty good job. And those are the kinds of techniques that 

I think we are going to be exploring in the industry over the next 

few years. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is fascinating and encouraging because there is a kind of confidence there based on some experience 

you have had that in the end the better part of human nature prevails. 

Mr. WALES. Well, one of the classic examples I always give is to 

imagine that you are going to design a restaurant. And you think 

to yourself in this restaurant we are going to be serving steak. And 

since we are serving steak, the customers will have access to 

knives. And when people have access to knives, they might stab 

each other. So to design our restaurant, we are going to put everybody inside a cage. 

Well, this makes a bad society. That is not the kind of open society we want to live in. But unfortunately, when people are engagVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:22 Nov 06, 2009 Jkt 040507 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\40507.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
25 

ing in web design, this is often exactly the kind of thinking that 

they have. They think of all of the bad things that people might 

do and design everything around those worst case scenarios rather 

than saying, oh you know what, let us keep things as open as we 

can and wait until we see the bad behavior and then think about 

what to do about it. We call the police. We get an ambulance. Or 

in a digital context we simply change it back to the old version. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I am going to stop now and yield to Senator Akaka. Thanks again for being here. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important hearing on implementation and reauthorization 

of the E–Government Act. I have been a strong advocate for transparency in government as well as for privacy for all Americans. We 

need to continue to keep emphasizing privacy and expanding access 

to appropriate government information. 

That is where I come from. And I want to thank the Chairman 

for what he is doing along these lines and working hard at it. 

I would like to ask the first question to Karen Evans from OMB, 

and tell you that making government information more available 

to the public by posting it online is important for government 

transparency. However, I am concerned that information in Federal 

forms posted online are often written in, let me put it this way, bureaucratic language that is difficult for many Americans to understand. This can be especially burdensome for those helping people 

to access the information online, especially librarians. 

What steps is OMB taking to ensure that government information posted online is clear, well organized, and readily understandable? 

Ms. EVANS. Well, sir, it is good to see you again, thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you for being here. 

Ms. EVANS. I believe that our current policies that we have 

issued dealing with the implementation of the E–Government Act 

speaks to that very issue about talking about having information 

out there accessible, easily to find, and easily understandable. How 

the agencies have actually gone about that and executed that is 

what we are discussing more today. 

I believe that the Federal CIO Council, which was also codified 

through this Act, has a leadership role in this as well as the Web 

forum that we have established through USA.gov, that they then 

work on best practices. They continuously put together toolkits for 

content managers for agencies to put that information out. But 

based on many of these things that my colleagues have said today, 

I believe we will have to go back and revisit many of those to see 

if we really are doing it in the best way that we can, or should they 

be updated so that things are going out in a way that citizens understand them and can easily find them. 

Senator AKAKA. I would like to follow up by asking Mr. Wales 

about your thoughts on this kind of an organization. I was interested to hear the Chairman use the word ‘‘wiki.’’ And as you know, 

in Hawaiian that means to hurry up or do it quickly. And when 

I saw pedia, I was thinking of walking fast. But it is along the line 

of encyclopedias and of course, the whole thing comes to me as 

26 

being important through knowledge and facts and done in such a 

way where people can understand them and absorb them and use 

them for their benefits. 

So in this case, in this question that I asked Ms. Evans, I just 

wanted your thoughts about that. 

Mr. WALES. Well, I think that one of the interesting things that 

we see is that the communities who come together, one of the 

things they really prize is making information available to people 

in a way that they can understand. And that is something that 

often specialists, or bureaucrats who are often specialists of some 

kind, really can sometimes struggle with. Not intentionally, but 

just because they live in a certain world and speak a certain language and it is very hard for them to really remember and get at, 

that language is very hard for other people to understand. 

This is one of the areas that I would recommend that the Federal 

Government agencies consider doing some public facing wiki 

project experiments where perhaps what the general public could 

do is come in and help explain things in more plain language. Perhaps with the assistance of staff at the agencies to monitor the 

quality and things like that. But this is a potentially fabulous way 

of getting at things, particularly in the areas where there has not 

traditionally been really funding available to explain some arcane 

regulations to the general public because the regulations are not 

meant to apply necessarily to the general public. But they may 

have an interest in knowing and a right to know. 

So I think there is a lot of potential here. 

Senator AKAKA. Well, thank you. I want to thank both of you for 

those answers. 

Ms. EVANS. I would like to add one thing to this. 

Senator AKAKA. Yes. 

Ms. EVANS. So, as we are talking about how to do this, the government, we are ready to roll out the new website dealing with the 

Transparency Act. And there is going to be an event tomorrow. Included in that is the wiki technology, the collaborative technology 

to do exactly the types of activities that you are talking about, because the Federal Financial Accountability Transparency Act has a 

very specific requirement about having citizens interact and continuously take feedback back on how the website has developed, 

how we do these requirements, how information is available, and 

how we are putting all this information out. 

So we have embraced this. It is going to be included in this roll 

out. We are going to be using this collaborative technology to really 

take a look at how we have interpreted the law, how we are displaying it, and then take the feedback back on future requirements, future enhancements. And also the actual text around it 

based on the issues that you are now highlighting. Because as you 

said, we write in a certain way which may have absolutely no 

meaning to the people who are looking at the data. 

So it will be there. We are going to be actively taking this information and requirements and we are hoping that they will define 

and refine their own requirements going forward. 

Senator AKAKA. Well, I want you to know that this issue is especially important to me. I recently introduced the Plain Language in 

Government Communications Act, which is S. 2291, along with 

27 

Senators Levin, Carper, McCaskill, and Obama, requiring that 

agencies write information released to the public in clearer and 

more understandable manner. So this is why I am really interested 

in this issue. 

Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Do you have any more questions, Senator 

Akaka? 

Senator AKAKA. I do. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Maybe I will do a round and I then will 

come back to you. I thank you. And this time I will go by the clock, 

now that you are here. 

This is just not the Governmental Affairs Committee, we are 

now, over the last few years, the Homeland Security Committee so 

we have a special responsibility with regard to protecting the 

homeland both from terrorist attack and from natural disasters. 

One of the remarkable uses, and this is where Wikipedia becomes itself a kind of public service beyond the information part of 

it. I gather, or I have been told, that during the recent California 

wildfires, Wikipedia became for many people the place of choice for 

the most recent information about the movement of the wildfires. 

People who were living there were following it. 

Intellipedia, which we mentioned earlier, was used to allow various agencies to file status updates and communicate with each 

other during those fires. I have heard, and maybe Mr. Needham 

can confirm this, that when Steve Fossett, who I was privileged to 

know, the great adventurer, was missing that a group of his friends 

formed their own site and divided the enormous space in which 

they thought his plane had gone down. And I believe they must 

have used Google Earth, and they each took a section of it and 

searched it. Really an unbelievable capacity. 

In fact they found some missing planes and things that had been 

missing for years, but they unfortunately did not find his plane. 

So I wanted to start with you, Mr. Wales, and ask what lessons, 

what kind of opportunities can we draw from these experiences 

which can perhaps help us. The nice thing about what you have 

done is that it self-generates, so it does not require a government 

mandate. But sometimes it may require a government incentive. 

So is there anything you can think about, and I will ask the 

other panelists their thoughts, about how we may bring this potential use of Wikipedia, even Google Earth and others—or just awareness of collaborative possibilities—to bear to both help us prevent 

and then particularly respond to disasters, both natural and 

human. 

Mr. WALES. So this tendency of Wikipedia to do a really good job 

of covering this sort of major crisis events is something that we 

first saw on September 11, 2001, actually. We were a very young 

project at that time and on September 11, 2001, we still had very 

few articles about anything, frankly. You could turn on the television and there was not much to be said. So all you saw was the 

video playing over and over and over and over, the planes crashing 

into the towers. 

Well, at Wikipedia the volunteers began frantically working to 

fill in all of the kinds of background information that people might 

want to know. So we did not have an article that morning about 

28 

the World Trade Center, so quickly somebody started the article. 

There would be articles created that day about things like the architect who designed it, an article about the Pentagon, about all of 

the airlines that were in someway involved that day. All of that 

kind of background information. 

We were still a very young project at the time. Nowadays we see 

that happen in a much more broad way, Hurricane Katrina, the 

tsunami, and the recent wildfires. People get very active in participating. And one of the great powers of this model is that we are 

able to bring to bear more individual minds to the problem than 

almost anybody else. So we can have a couple hundred people who 

are scouring through the web and who also have their own personal prior knowledge of where to find different kinds of information and begin pulling that information together in a coherent 

framework so that people can access it and understand it. 

In general, if we want to make sure that the process proceeds efficiently, basically all of the kinds of initiatives that we have been 

talking about today, making sure that when our volunteers are 

able to use Google or Yahoo! to find a piece of information on a 

Federal Government website they are able to then highlight and 

amplify the volume of the signal there for the general public so 

that if there is something important going and FEMA issues a 

statement, that statement will first be findable in the search engines but it will also be immediately available for the volunteers 

to analyze and integrate into the Wikipedia article. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Ms. Evans, let me ask you, and I had not 

thought about it before preparing for this hearing to ask DHS or 

FEMA, whether in crisis situations today those Federal agencies 

are attempting to create sites on which information can be shared, 

particularly from within the affected areas. And whether you think 

they should. 

Ms. EVANS. Well, we do have two initiatives. One in particular 

is disaster management. It is not shared in an open community to 

the extent that the Wikipedia communities of interest, that type of 

approach is set forth. But it is shared within the first responder 

community based on a lot of the things that we are talking about. 

And that information is posted out there, it is a tool set. Could it 

be more collaborative? Should it be more open to the public? That 

is what we provide, the environment, so that the local communities 

can use that information as it is being posted by the Federal agencies to be able to respond so that they are using the same Geographic Information System (GIS). They are all using the same 

type of information to be able to respond. 

But that is an initiative that is poised and ready to move to the 

next evolution of services. All of these are foundational. They have 

the basic and what they really needed to do was break down the 

silos of those communities working together. It is not so much the 

technology. It is how that community works together and responds 

between the fire department, the police department, and those 

guys. 

And so a lot of what our initiatives have done have brought those 

communities of interest together. This now allows us to take it to 

the next level, directly involve the citizenry, where it needs to be 

29 

and how it should be involved. And the technology will allow us to 

do that. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I hope you will do that because, in the 

most really remarkable way that could not have been foreseen by 

earlier generations, the Internet capabilities allow us, as you all 

know, to create community activity at a level which was unheard 

of, and in that sense could build a sense of community where often 

today in actual geographic communities it does not exist. 

Ms. EVANS. Right. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. With Senator Akaka’s permission, I am 

going to let Mr. Needham get into this. I am over my time. 

Mr. NEEDHAM. Sure. I just want to add to the observations made 

here and give two examples of what we are describing here of the 

use of these tools in the context of an emergency. 

With the recent wildfires in Southern California, a public broadcaster in the area in San Diego used the Google Map service to provide information to the public aggregated from multiple emergency 

management agencies so that a user could go straight to Google 

Maps, not suffer from the lag times one sometimes experiences 

with a government website which does not have the capacity that 

Google can put behind its service. And there citizens found information on evacuation routes, on the reach of the wildfires, the 

areas at risk, and so forth. 

A second example I will give, which is relevant to web search 

which is what I have come here today to talk about. Recently there 

was an earthquake in the Bay Area, the largest in the last 20 

years. And I happened to be there with my family, that recently 

moved to California. And we were obviously unnerved to feel ourselves shaking for the first time in an earthquake. So I grabbed my 

mobile phone and searched for ‘‘earthquake California.’’ The first 

search result was a U.S. Geological Survey website, where I was 

able to view in realtime there the gravity of the earthquake, see 

a visualization of its reach and know that we were, in fact, safe 

and we could proceed home and so forth. 

These are examples of tools that are built on government information that are in the hands of citizens in a way that we did not 

have before. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is a great example. Thanks. Senator 

Akaka. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to ask 

Mr. Schwartz, overall, what is your opinion regarding how well 

agencies are fulfilling their requirements of the E–Government 

Act? Especially in relation to privacy provisions? 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. Thank you, Senator Akaka. 

This Section 208 of the Act is the main privacy section. And for 

the most part, it has really been a mixed picture from the agencies. 

We have seen some agencies really do exceptionally well in creating 

what are really the best Privacy Impact Assessments in the world. 

The Department of Homeland Security actually has a site dedicated to promoting how Privacy Impact Assessments should be 

done within the agency. They have a large team of privacy professionals that can work with different parts of the agencies. 

But yet we have other agencies that have not implemented it 

well at all. We heard the latest percentages from Ms. Evans, and 

30 

I actually missed the numbers, but there are still some that are not 

implementing PIAs when they are supposed to be, which I think 

should be the biggest concern. 

But there is also some agencies that are only doing them in a 

cursory fashion. For example, my organization wrote to Secretary 

Rice about the State Department’s passport program and why, for 

their Privacy Impact Assessment, they really only had a half of a 

page on Privacy Impact Assessment, publicly available for citizens 

for what should be one of the most privacy sensitive documents 

that we have. 

And we never received a full answer as to why we do not have 

a greater Privacy Impact Assessment trying to figure exactly how 

information is being transferred using the new electronic chip in 

the passport, etc. We have gone over some of those issues and I 

think we feel that some of the security measures that they have 

taken are good measures. But in the long run there should be publicly available information about what kind of steps the State Department has taken to show this kind of a balance. 

And so, even among those that are doing PIAs, we are seeing 

that they are very poorly done. 

I think a part of that is a larger, gets to the larger issue which 

is we do not have—some agencies have a good privacy program in 

them, like DHS, mostly because it was written into the Department 

of Homeland Security Act. When Senator Lieberman introduced it 

originally, it had a privacy provision in it. You had a good chief privacy officer who came into the department at the time that it was 

formed. 

We have not seen that in other agencies. And because we do not 

have that kind of leadership within agencies, we have not been 

able to see a good program put into place. And it also means we 

are not even seeing the letter of the law of the Privacy Act put into 

place. And the Privacy Act, over time, has weakened because of the 

way technology has formed. 

We urge the Congress to take a larger, a broader look at some 

of the issues around privacy and the Privacy Act and we hope that 

this Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Privacy Act, will do 

that. 

Senator AKAKA. Well, thank you for that because we would like 

to receive recommendations as to how we can bring this about with 

all agencies. So thank you for that. 

Ms. Evans, GAO found that agencies routinely collect information about individuals from commercial sources, but often do not 

perform Privacy Impact Assessments. However, according to OMB’s 

guidance, agencies should be performing PIAs when they make systematic use of commercial sources. 

What is OMB doing to ensure that the use of these commercial 

sources is addressed in PIAs and other evaluations? 

Ms. EVANS. Well, first, we did issue a policy memo back in February 2005 where all agencies have to have the designation of a 

senior agency official for privacy. What we have done is last year 

we have incorporated annual reporting now into the overall annual 

report that we submit to Congress for the Federal Information Security Management Act in March. So last year was the first year 

that we actually provided a report on government-wide privacy asVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:22 Nov 06, 2009 Jkt 040507 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\40507.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
31 

pects which included PIAs and agencies conducting PIAs, doing the 

PIAs, and the systems that were appropriate. 

To get to Mr Schwartz’s issue and your issue, sir, what we have 

added this year which we will be reporting for going forward is the 

quality of that program. We have asked the inspector generals to 

review the process that the agency uses internally to determine 

and assess the quality of the PIA itself. Because we believe that 

represents the whole thing from start to finish: How you decide 

what information you are going to use, whether you publish it, 

whether you are collecting it in the Systems of Records and Notice, 

how you publish that, how you put it out, and then how you then 

take it and use it in an IT system. 

So when we submit the report this year in March, we will also 

have additional statistics about the quality that each agency has in 

that process. Then we will be going back to work individually with 

each of those agencies to improve that quality because the Administration is very committed to the privacy aspects of the information that we collect and use. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Senator Akaka. Senator Carper, welcome. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. We have had a very interesting morning 

and we are glad you are here. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER 

Senator CARPER. Now Mr. Wales, just a quick question, if you 

will. What caused you to go out and form the business enterprise 

that you have and that has been so successful? What was the spark 

that caused you to go out and create Wikipedia? 

I do not mean to interrupt. My son is coming from his high 

school Charter High School of Wilmington, Delaware, and they are 

going to be here tomorrow with the Young Democrats and Young 

Republicans coming on the same bus from Wilmington, Delaware. 

You can sit on either side of the aisle. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That should be a very collaborative experience. 

Senator CARPER. It promises to be that. And they have the opportunity to pick among three hearings to attend for 45 minutes or so 

tomorrow morning. And I know they would all love to be here. 

They talk about Wikipedia a lot. 

Mr. WALES. Oh, yes. 

So the original inspiration for Wikipedia came about 2 years before I created Wikipedia. I was watching the growth of the open 

source software movement, Free Software, and recognized that programmers were coming together from all over the world to collaborate on creating software in a new way. And like a lot of people, 

when I first saw this happening I thought well this is kind of fun, 

a hobby, but you know it really cannot work. 

But very quickly we were seeing that GNU, Linux, Apache, PHP, 

PERL—all of the software that really runs the web underneath 

was all collaboratively written, typically by volunteers using a new 

model of sharing, and using licenses that allow other people to take 

your work, modify it, reuse it, and so forth. 

32 

And so, I realized that this model of collaboration was working 

and that it was something that could be very big in the future. 

It is natural that this started with programmers because if programmers need tools to collaborate to share their code with each 

other, they can create their own tools. So for example, they have 

a program called CVS, which they use to check in and out changes 

of code so that multiple people can be working on the same project 

at the same time. But for the rest of us the only way we could really collaborate was by e-mailing around word processing documents 

or whatever. Which if you have ever sent out a document to eight 

people and asked for revisions and you get eight different versions 

back, it is a nightmare. 

And so I realized that what we really wanted to see was the creation of tools for people to be able to effectively collaborate. 

My first version of this, I had the idea that there should be a free 

encyclopedia. That seemed like an obvious thing. I was in a panic 

actually when I had the idea that I thought somebody else would 

do it first. But I designed it in collaboration with a guy that I had 

hired to help me. It was a very top-down approach, very old fashioned, and it failed. It did not really take advantage of the possibilities of the new medium and for volunteers a very academic topdown approach was just not very fun. 

So we discovered the wiki editing technology which had been 

around for quite some time and applied it to the encyclopedia and 

it just began taking off almost immediately. 

Senator CARPER. You may have already said this, but the lessons 

that you learned in that endeavor, how might we apply them effectively here? 

Mr. WALES. I think there are a few basic principles. One is to 

recognize that most people are basically good, and so it actually is 

possible to have a fairly open system with fairly light controls that 

allows the community to police themselves. And you can actually 

get really good quality work in that way. 

I always compare it to—the management of a community website 

is very similar to good municipal government. You do not want a 

police state where people can be kicked out of the project for the 

slightest hint of dissent. At the same time, you do not want complete anarchy where people are getting mugged in the park and 

that sort of thing. So you have to find that balance between openness and control that really puts the power into the hands of the 

community. 

And I think that those kinds of ideas are very applicable, clearly 

to a democratic government in a free society. One of the things I 

think we should be experimenting with is agencies experimenting 

with doing public facing wikis to try to get the engagement of the 

public in various aspects of their work. 

Senator CARPER. Thanks very much. 

Ms. Evans, it is nice to see you again. As I am sure you recall 

you were here, a couple of months ago, discussing at-risk IT investments. 

In your testimony today, I think you stated that the E–Government Act authorizes Federal IT workforce development programs. 

How have agencies progressed since 2002, in closing and identifying IT workforce gaps? 

33 

Ms. EVANS. As required by the E–Government Act and also the 

Clinger-Cohen Act, we have identified the gaps. The CIO Council 

takes a leadership role in that. We actually have an updated IT 

workforce assessment summary that we will be releasing shortly 

and we—this is voluntarily response rate. And so we had a 40 percent response rate. 

We have identified the same gaps going forward. The agencies 

have plans in place to close those gaps and that is now being monitored through the President’s Management Agenda. We need to 

improve more about what we are doing and actually have better 

metrics to clearly demonstrate that we actually have closed the 

gaps and we are working with the agencies now on that, as well 

as the Office of Personnel Management so that we will have clear 

metrics so we can hold ourselves accountable for in that area. 

Senator CARPER. All right. And how do yo plan to continue closing these IT workforce gaps in the future? 

Ms. EVANS. There is a couple of things that we have done, besides the actual plans and the hiring. The Council itself has the 

biggest gap in making sure that we have the workforce, that we 

hire the workforce, recruit them, and then bring them in, and have 

the training program. 

So the CIO Council itself has worked on several recruitment 

tools, videos. We have also held online hiring sessions where we 

have used some of our special authorities so that we could then 

take those and work with OPM and then immediately hire the 

folks through online types of registration, making use of the technology so that we can attract the workers. 

But then what the challenge that we have is we have to make 

sure that our workplace retains the workers. The new workforce 

coming in, when you start looking at the demographics, are used 

to certain tool sets. And we have to make sure that the government 

provides those tool sets so that we can retain them once they are 

here. 

Senator CARPER. How do you measure success in this regard? 

Ms. EVANS. Currently, right now the one metric is the hiring 

metric we have. And then we are also tracking the project managers through the framework that the CIO Council has released 

about the skill levels associated with that. But we need to have 

better metrics and we are working on developing those metrics, especially in the area of cyber security, enterprise architects, and solution architects. 

Senator CARPER. Good. Thanks for being here today. In fact, all 

of you, thank you for being here today. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Senator Carper. Senator Akaka, 

if you have a question or two more, we would welcome them. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Evans, 

every government website currently contains a list of individual 

parts of the site that should not be made searchable by services 

such as Google Search or Microsoft Live Search. When OMB implemented USASearch.gov, it just contracted with Microsoft Search at 

the time, meaning that the same search restrictions for commercial 

services were also in this government search. 

The E–Government Reauthorization Act calls for enhanced access to search government websites by commercial, let me say, 

34 

search engines which would evaluate and make government search 

engines more effective, as well. USASearch.gov was meant to be a 

single point to search all government websites. However, it is 

largely based on the same technology in use by other commercial 

search engines such as Google and subject to the same limitations 

as have been discussed here today. 

When OMB set up USASearch.gov, why did it not ask agencies 

to make improvements to their searchability at that time? 

Ms. EVANS. Well, sir, we believe based on the policy that we did 

issue as required by the E–Government Act that we have asked 

agencies to do that and that we have provided the framework and 

the policy in place for them to do it. I believe the way that the reauthorization language has been written, this will give us the 

mechanism to follow up and make sure that there is accountability 

for that. It is one thing to have a policy. It is another thing to have 

an agency implement it and then also report to you on an annual 

basis the results, ‘‘like a scoring’’ of what they are doing. 

And so what we are going to do through the Council and through 

the web communities that we have, is make sure that we take advantage of things such as the sitemap standard and looking at that 

information and making a very conscious decision that yes, all of 

this has to be available. And if they make a decision that maybe 

it should not be available, then maybe it should not be available 

to the public all together. Maybe they need to pull that down and 

there is a reason why. 

But the agencies have to go through this and look at it. And I 

think the way that we have written it that you guys are doing this, 

our policies will accommodate for the language that is in there and 

hold the agencies accountable for that in a very transparent way. 

Senator AKAKA. Did you need this reauthorization to implement 

improvements? 

Ms. EVANS. No, sir. But I would say that—because we always are 

evaluating our policy. But I would say with the reauthorization it 

signals to the Federal agencies, and not just to the agencies, but 

globally, because we are looked at globally, across the board, about 

all of the different types of services. We do meet quarterly with all 

of our counterparts in several other countries. And what this will 

signify to them is the commitment that the government has, both 

the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch, on the use of 

technology in a responsible way to ensure that government information and government services are available. 

We could have done it through our own administrative authorities, but this is something that I think is important to you as well 

as us. And so the reauthorization of that Act signifies that to the 

global community, as well. 

Mr. NEEDHAM. Senator, if I may comment. 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Needham, yes. 

Mr. NEEDHAM. This has been our experience, in fact, in communicating with dozens of Federal agencies that they understand the 

value of search, the importance of search, and by and large all have 

complied with the E–Government Act of 2002 in providing a search 

tool on their website or a site search tool. 

But we do not find as much awareness or focus on web search, 

the step by which a citizen gets to that website to begin with. And 

35 

one factor we have identified is a lack of clear guidance or directive 

from OMB. And with this legislation that has been proposed, we 

think that will close that gap and the agencies will understand the 

need to prioritize web search and ensure that whether that user or 

that citizen is searching on Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Live Search, 

Ask.com or USA.gov, the example that you noted, they will find the 

appropriate Federal agency website. 

Senator AKAKA. Well, thank you very much for that, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Senator Akaka. Senator Carper. 

Senator CARPER. If I could, a question. It is for Mr. Schwartz, but 

also I am going to ask our other witnesses to respond to it with 

their thoughts. 

But to Mr. Schwartz, I was not here when you did this, but I am 

told by my staff and that you brought up some very good points in 

your testimony about privacy issues. And we all hear too often of 

breaches that have occurred in certain segments of our government 

and constituents are at risk, whether it is identity theft, or having 

some other sensitive information, even medical information and 

that kind of thing publicly disclosed. 

And while OMB has issued a series of memoranda to address 

this issue, it is imperative that personal information trusted to the 

government remain secure. And I would ask for you, and for the 

other three witnesses today, to just share with us what you believe 

to be maybe the top three things that ought to be done to protect 

our personal information. 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. Thank you, Senator Carper. I think this is an 

issue that this Committee could look into in more detail, as I said 

earlier. One of the main things is looking back at the Privacy Act. 

Well, let me first say that the Committee has already taken the 

step of passing the E–Government Reauthorization Act, which includes a privacy provision, which would create best practices for 

PIAs. I was glad to hear Ms. Evans cite that they are working on 

quality of the PIAs. That is the first step. Now they can look across 

those and see what they consider to be high quality PIAs, these are 

Privacy Impact Assessments, and create a best practice based on 

what the government is doing today, the agencies that are doing 

a good job today. 

So I think that is one area that this Committee has already 

taken a step. I hope that will pass and so that when the agencies 

have to cooperate with OMB, they see that it has Congressional approval as well, in terms of those best practices, especially moving 

into a new Administration after next year. 

The second area that I would point to is looking at the Privacy 

Act. In particular, one thing that we have pointed to are some of 

the definitions in the Privacy Act. I do not want to get too technical, but there is the main definition of how you figure out what 

is covered under the Privacy Act of 1974. It is called a System of 

Records. And the idea there is that if you, as an agency, gather 

records together based on whether it is personal information or not, 

and you have that information and you actually search on those 

terms, then it is a System of Records. 

If you just gather the information together and keep it in a place, 

but you do not go in a search specifically on name or specifically 

36 

on Social Security number, it may not be a System of Records 

under the law. 

This is because the law was written in 1974 when we had centralized databases and it was assumed you would always be 

searching by a Social Security number or a name, right, and not 

that you could search any of the fields in the database. 

Some agencies have interpreted the law very literally, whereas 

some agencies are taking the broader approach of saying that this 

was meant to apply to information that is collected in a single 

place. 

That, to me, is one area where, especially in the web age where 

you can search information across various different resources at 

the same time, so it might not even be in the same central place. 

We need to go back and look at some of those definitions like that. 

Another example, just because you gave me three, is the definition of routine use, where agencies can say beforehand that they 

are going to use information, share it with other agencies, and 

make very broad exceptions as to how they are going to share information, as long as they do it in advance. There is this loophole 

that is called the routine use exemption, that basically has no limits. As long as you say you are going to use it in advance, you can 

share that information in advance. 

I think we need to go back and look at that in a records context 

and say, maybe we should have some limits to what kinds of routine uses there should be. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you. Mr. Wales. 

Mr. WALES. Well, I am not really an expert on what the Federal 

Government is doing about privacy. I just wanted to make one general point, which is that technology has impacted privacy in sometimes surprising way, so that information that people felt comfortable being public when it meant that you could go down to the 

courthouse and look it up, feels very different when you can type 

in your name in a search engine and anyone can find it just like 

that. 

An example in Florida, this is not our Federal Government example, but a State example: All of the tax records for homes, which 

have been public, I suppose forever, including diagrams and now 

satellite photos of people’s houses, is all available just by searching 

on people’s names in the local county assessor’s office. 

A lot of people find that very unnerving even though it is the 

same information that has always been available publicly, except 

it is a little different if you actually had to go down to the courthouse to get it. 

And so I think in many ways we are going to have to be not just 

thinking about how do we make sure the government is adhering 

to some privacy standards but actually rethinking what kinds of 

things people consider private or not and may need a philosophical 

approach to that question. 

Senator CARPER. Good. Thank you. Mr. Needham. 

Mr. NEEDHAM. So the one recommendation that we would offer 

at Google is the same that I have been articulating this morning, 

which is that Sitemap Protocol or Sitemaps Technology not only enables an agency to tell search engines come and index this information. It can also say stop indexing this information. Simply by withVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:22 Nov 06, 2009 Jkt 040507 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\40507.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
37 

drawing an item from that sitemap, that is the message to each 

search engine to remove that record. 

So that if there was a record found in a database that contained 

PII, the agency can swiftly remove it from search engines through 

this technology. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thanks. Ms. Evans, the closing word? 

Ms. EVANS. Well, because you asked about the top three issues 

and I think that what we have changed, and Mr. Wales has really 

highlighted this, is how we used to traditionally collect information, 

the way we would announce it through the Federal Register, and 

have looked at that need for the information. The Administration 

has really looked at that, issued the policy about the safeguarding 

but what is key to that is, why are we collecting the information? 

Is it really necessary for us to have that information? 

For example, Social Security numbers. We are actually asking 

agencies to really go back, look at that. Why are you collecting that 

information? Do you really need to have that? Or was it convenient 

for the programmers, as a unique identifier, to tie all of these systems together? And couldn’t we just randomly generate a unique 

identifier and crosswalk these? 

I mean technology has evolved, for some of the reasons why we 

were collecting certain data in order to make it easier. Now because technology is now gone to the next evolution, some of those 

business practices we do not need to do anymore. 

And so we really have been focusing on the agencies, really having them go back and look at their information holdings. That is 

the purpose of the policy in which was M–0716. We are holding 

agencies accountable for it. It is a fairly comprehensive policy. And 

if you track the scorecard and the progress that the agencies make, 

last quarter we took every agency down because they did not meet 

all of the requirements that were in there. And part of that is reviewing all of the information holdings. How do they use that and 

then how are they protecting that? 

Senator CARPER. OK. My thanks to all of you. Thanks for being 

here and for your responses. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Senator Carper. That was a important line of questioning. I appreciate it. 

I want to thank all of the witnesses. This really has been an excellent and, for me, exciting hearing. I am grateful for the progress 

that we have made in the first 5 years into the E–Government Act. 

We obviously have more to do. 

And the reason this hearing is exciting is because of the dynamism of this part of our lives and the tremendous potential for government. Obviously it effects us in so many other ways, but in this 

case we are focused on government. 

So we want to continue to work with you or push you occasionally. I hope you will come to us if you need help, Ms. Evans. 

Ms. EVANS. Yes, sir. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. We are advocates for support because we 

really believe in what you are doing. I must say, I talked when I 

was speaking about you, Mr. Wales, that you are a line that goes 

back into America to Franklin and Jefferson of innovators. Much 

younger, of course. 

38 

But this hearing inspires me to put into the record one of my favorite expressions of the American spirit from American literature, 

which is Mark Twain’s depiction of Huckleberry Finn and Jim on 

that raft on the Mississippi. And every time they approach the 

bend in the river, though they did not know what was on the other 

side, they never feared it. They always had this tremendous sense 

of excitement. And also confidence that they could meet whatever 

was there and, in some sense, turn it to their benefit. 

And I think that it exactly—I suppose I cannot resist a certain 

amount of chauvinism in expressing pride that it was the Defense 

Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a Federal agency 

that actually created this modern American river, global river of 

the Internet. But that you all are really helping us to have that 

same kind of spirit of adventure and confidence and excitement as 

we approach the various bends in the river that human experience 

makes sure we will constantly approach. 

And so for our part, we want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to see that the Federal Government is making 

maximal use of these technologies. I thank you very much. 

The record of the hearing will stay open for 15 days in case you 

want to add anything to your testimony and in case Members of 

the Committee, particularly those who could not, for reasons of 

schedule, be here this morning, and want to ask you any questions 

in writing. 

But I thank you very much for the time you took to be here, for 

what you are doing everyday, and for what you have contributed 

to our attempt to drive this exciting sense of opportunity through 

the Federal Government. 

The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:02 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

(39) 

A P P E N D I X 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS 

Offering Federal services and information via the Internet gives people immensely 

valuable tools for their personal, business, and civic lives. 

Anyone with access to a computer and the Web can visit the Federal portal 

USA.gov and be only a few mouse clicks away from printable tax forms, information 

on home heating assistance, an e-mail link to their Senator, testimony on legislation 

of interest, museum collections, data on Civil War ancestors, advice for small business, recipes for low-cost nutrition, energy-saving tips, instructional videos, and 

thousands of other topics. 

These ‘‘E-Government’’ offerings not only provide near-instantaneous information 

and services to citizens, but also save the Federal Government and individual citizens money that would otherwise be spent on phone or mail queries or in printing 

and delivering physical documents. 

Online resources also allow Federal employees to book travel, enroll in and modify 

selections in their benefit programs, receive training, and perform other tasks quickly and efficiently. In addition, they are powerful ‘‘force multipliers’’ for government 

employees who need to research laws and regulations, respond to constituent inquiries, or collaborate with workers in other agencies. 

Our intelligence community offers a good example of Internet technology at work. 

The three classified, collaborative sites that constitute the ‘‘Intellipedia’’ promote intelligence sharing and collaboration on important national security issues. 

The World Wide Web—the collection of publicly accessible, hyperlinked texts and 

graphics that reside on servers connected to the Internet—is less than 20 years old, 

and is still developing. The Federal commitment to the Web, formalized with the 

E-Government Act of 2002, is only 5 years old. We have not yet fully tapped the 

promise of the Internet as a valuable tool for the Federal Government and the public. 

Appreciating both the value and the unfulfilled potential of e-government services, 

I was delighted to join Senator Lieberman as an original cosponsor of S. 2321, the 

E-Government Reauthorization Act of 2007. 

Apart from its reauthorization of several important programs, the bill contains an 

additional provision that will improve the public’s ability to access Federal information posted on the Internet by encouraging Federal agencies to make online public 

information open to indexing by commercial search engines. 

I understand that a large portion of Federal Web pages are not configured to permit automated indexing by ‘‘crawlers’’ or ‘‘spiders’’ for search services like Google, 

Yahoo!, or Ask.com. If the pages are posted on the Web, I see little reason, as a 

general practice, for not making them accessible to search engines. 

Some agencies have expressed concern about this provision because they fear a 

citizen might download a form without accompanying instructions or without examining other important information. That may be a valid issue, but it is not unique 

to the Internet, and there should be ways to mitigate it without making useful materials invisible to search engines. The searchability provision of our reauthorization 

bill should lead to OMB guidelines that will encourage agencies to review the architecture of their Web pages and make any necessary changes to address such concerns. 

That is just one example, Mr. Chairman, of the E-Government issues that the 

government must address. Today’s witnesses from OMB, Wikipedia, Google, and the 

Center for Democracy and Technology are well positioned to advise us on the stateof-the-art and on best practices for enhancing the value of E-Government to Federal 

agencies and to the American public. 

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