August 31, 2000
Contact: 202-456-6108

The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) today released the report Transforming Access To Government Through Information Technology. which highlights findings and recommendations for both improving public access to Federal information resources and simplifying internal and external government transactions. The report is the first in a series offering follow-on recommendations to the PITAC's February 1999 report, Information Technology Research: Investing in Our Future.

Neal Lane, the President's Science Advisor, expressed appreciation to the PITAC, noting that "Time and again, the President has demonstrated a strong commitment to using information technology to create a more user-friendly government for the American people. The recommendations in this report offer us a path to better harness the potential of information technology, and bring us closer to making the President's vision a reality."

The PITAC offers three key recommendations that will make government, with its vital information and services, more easily accessible and usable by all its citizens regardless of their physical location, level of computer literacy, or physical ability:

	Fund an aggressive IT research program that addresses the Federal government's most critical long-term technology challenges.
	Create within OMB an Office for Electronic Government, to promote innovative IT efforts and policies across Federal agencies, and a Government IT Innovation Program (GITIP) that would fund high-risk, exploratory, and experimental IT projects.
	Establish pilot projects and Emerging Technology Centers (ETCs) to encourage information integration across government sectors and to push leading-edge information technology into operational systems.

The PITAC sees these recommendations as critical steps toward fundamentally changing the way citizens interact with the government, and has used this report to identify several critical, long-term research issues, which are fundamental to enabling citizens with a more active roll in interacting with the Federal government. These research issues include security and privacy, data integration, software development and quality, scaling the information infrastructure, development and availability of high-end systems, and understanding the social, economic, and workforce implications of digital government.

PITAC members David Cooper, Associate Director of Computation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Robert Ewald, President and CEO of E-Stamp Corporation, co-chaired the panel which authored the report. The PITAC, a body of top IT experts from private industry and the research and education communities, advises the President and the Office of Science and Technology Policy on all areas related to high performance computing and communications and information technologies. The Committee is co-chaired by Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Vice President for Technology and Strategy for IBM's Enterprise Systems Group, and Raj Reddy, Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University.

Copies of the report can be obtained from the National Coordination Office for Computing, Information, and Communications at (703) 292-ITRD (4873) or via their website http://www.ccic.gov.