Creating the front door to government: a case study of the Firstgov portal

Library Trends, Fall, 2003 by Patricia Diamond Fletcher

* 2001-2002 Golden Web Award, May 2001;

* Azimuth Award for supporting federal information technology went to Dave Barram, former GSA administrator, and Eric Brewer, for their part in FirstGov.gov, March 2001;

* FOSE and Chief Information Officers Council of Excellence Award, March 2001;

* Vice President's Hammer Award for Reinventing Government, January 2001. (Awards and recognition of FirstGov, n.d.)

Today (December 2002), there are more than 51 million Web pages at FirstGov from more than 2,000 Web sites, not only from the federal government but also from the District of Columbia, state governments, and the U.S. territories. Pages accessible on FirstGov are, by-and-large, not available on other commercial Web sites. The redesigned Web site is arranged by three gateways: citizen, business, and government. It is informational and transactional, enabling users to conduct business with government via the Internet. Transactions are available for citizen-to-government, business-to-government, and government-to-government processes. You can find and apply for government jobs, electronically pay an employee's child support obligation, electronically file for patent and trademarks, purchase government supplies, apply for federally guaranteed student loans, buy stamps, change your address, and a whole host of other activities that used to require bricks-and-mortar, paper-and-pencils. This is the twenty-four-hour access and convenience that was the goal of FirstGov when it went online.

In a study conducted by Stowers (2002), the author noted that the design and content of the site were both well thought-out and effective for the end user. Stowers described FirstGov as "strongly citizen focused" and gave high marks to its portfolio-type user gateways. The portal meets one of the most important criteria that users ask for in a government Web site-the ability to communicate with elected officials (Matthews, 2002), which is in line with Stowers's assessment above that FirstGov has a strong citizen orientation.

Firstgov has done some of its own soul-searching as well. In a survey administered to gauge customer satisfaction (May 2002) first-time users of the portal indicated that they were much more likely to revisit FirstGov than they had been prior to its February 2002 redesign. This was the most significant finding of the survey. Return users to the portal noted that it was easier to find information and that they more often now recommended FirstGov to others as a search engine.

Of course, as with anything done by the government, not all reviews of FirstGov have been favorable. The portal has been criticized as not accessible to end-users, little more than a table of contents to government, not meeting many project deadlines and, most recently and visibly, it has received much adverse publicity for awarding the new search engine contract to a Norwegian company. This award was greeted with dismay and outright antagonism, as many felt the search engine for the premier U.S. government Web site should be a U.S. company. However, FirstGov has gone ahead with this award and Fast Search and Transfer will provide the search services for the next five years at a projected cost of $1.85 million a year (Federal Computer Week, 2002). The selection of the Oslo-based company did, however, dispel the fear of many in the software industry that Inktomi, with its initial donation of the FirstGov search engine, had an unfair competitive advantage. While Inktomi bid for the new procurement, it was not chosen.