White House praises potential of e-gov project

A federal initiative dubbed the Business Compliance One-Stop Project shows the "greatest potential" toward reducing the government paperwork burden on small businesses, the White House concluded in a recent report.

Submitted to Congress on June 28, the report by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) urged agencies to work together to create more e-government programs.

Small businesses complain that "there's too much red tape, paperwork and time needed to comply with regulations, and they want government to pursue the promise of e-government as a solution," Mark Forman, OMB's e-government administrator, said in a statement. "The Business Compliance One-Stop Project is a direct response to these recommendations, and we're committed to making it happen."

A 2002 law directed OMB to convene a task force on electronic solutions to the regulatory paperwork burden imposed on small businesses. The project to create the Internet portal was launched last year on the recommendations of an interagency task force.

The project creates a "business gateway" to electronic forms and other documents that small businesses need to comply with regulations. OMB estimates that during fiscal 2003, businesses and individuals spent $320 billion and 8.2 billion hours submitting data to the government. The gateway is expected to cut the number of federal forms filed by 10 percent and bring agency compliance with the Government Paperwork Elimination Act to 75 percent by September 2004.

The report highlighted other federal e-government programs, including the Bush administration's efforts to reform e-government management, to craft blueprints for how disparate technology devices within an agency or among agencies should work together, and to support the work of the Architecture and Infrastructure Committee of the Chief Information Officers Council.

For e-government to succeed in the long run, agencies must demonstrate a "serious effort" to work with "other agencies, stakeholders, state governments and the business sector," the report concludes. Government also must commit the necessary management, financial resources and technology to make e-government an integral part of the federal bureaucracy.