GSA'S FirstGov.gov honored for innovation in E-Government - Brief Article

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, July 14, 2003

FirstGov.gov, the official Web portal of the U.S. government, was honored for innovations in electronic government during the E-Gov 2003 Conference recently held at the Washington Convention Center, the U.S. General Services Administration announced recently.

Under the direction of the GSA's Office of Citizen Services and Communications, FirstGov.gov's Cross-Agency Subscription Service received a Trailblazer Award on June 10 in recognition of the site's service that provides a one-stop Web page for citizens to subscribe to electronic newsletters from across government. The project is a collaboration between OCSC and GSA's Office of the Chief Information Officer.

Launched in December 2001, the Web page has made possible almost 500,000 subscription referrals to date. The page makes more than 1,000 referrals a day. The only cost to GSA and participating agencies is staff time and already existing resources.

"FirstGov has a key role in streamlining the interaction between citizens and their government as called for in President Bush's Management Agenda," said Mary Joy (M.J.) Jameson, Associate Administrator of the Office of Citizen Services and Communications at GSA. "We're very proud of the success we've found in the Cross-Agency Subscription Service; it shows yet another way in which FirstGov gives citizens easier access to the information and services they want from their government."

The annual E-Gov Awards drew 252 applications from all over the world and recognized 50 E-Gov innovations in three categories: Pioneers, Explorers and Trailblazers.