Building a 21st Century Digital Government

[Federal Register Volume 77, Number 106 (Friday, June 1, 2012)]
[Presidential Documents]
[Pages 32391-32392]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2012-13470]

___________________________________________________________________

Title 3--
The President

Memorandum of May 23, 2012

Building a 21st Century Digital Government

Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and
Agencies

The innovative use of technology is fundamentally
transforming how the American people do business and
live their daily lives. Exponential increases in
computing power, the rise of high-speed networks, and
the growing mobile revolution have put the Internet at
our fingertips, encouraging innovations that are giving
rise to new industries and reshaping existing ones.

Innovators in the private sector and the Federal
Government have used these technological advances to
fundamentally change how they serve their customers.
However, it is time for the Federal Government to do
more. For far too long, the American people have been
forced to navigate a labyrinth of information across
different Government programs in order to find the
services they need. In addition, at a time when
Americans increasingly pay bills and buy tickets on
mobile devices, Government services often are not
optimized for smartphones or tablets, assuming the
services are even available online.

On April 27, 2011, I issued Executive Order 13571
(Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer
Service), requiring executive departments and agencies
(agencies) to, among other things, identify ways to use
innovative technologies to streamline their delivery of
services to lower costs, decrease service delivery
times, and improve the customer experience. As the next
step toward modernizing the way Government works, I
charged my Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) with
developing a comprehensive Government-wide strategy to
build a 21st century digital Government that delivers
better digital services to the American people.

Today, the CIO is releasing that strategy, entitled
``Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform
to Better Serve the American People'' (Strategy), which
provides agencies with a 12-month roadmap that focuses
on several priority areas. The Strategy will enable
more efficient and coordinated digitalservice delivery
by requiring agencies to establish specific, measurable
goals for delivering better digital services;
encouraging agencies to deliver information in new ways
that fully utilize the power and potential of mobile
and web-based technologies; ensuring the safe and
secure delivery and use of digital services to protect
information and privacy; requiring agencies to
establish central online resources for outside
developers and to adopt new standards for making
applicable Government information open and machine-
readable by default; aggregating agencies' online
resource pages for developers in a centralized
catalogue on www.Data.gov; and requiring agencies to
use web performance analytics and customer satisfaction
measurement tools on all ``.gov'' websites.

Ultimately, this Strategy will ensure that agencies use
emerging technologies to serve the public as
effectively as possible. As a Government, and as a
trusted provider of services, we must never forget who
our customers are--the American people.

In order to ensure that agencies make the best use of
emerging technologies in serving the public, I hereby
direct each agency to take the following actions:

(1) implement the requirements of the Strategy within 12 months of the
date of this memorandum and comply with the timeframes for specific actions
specified therein; and

(2) within 90 days of the date of this memorandum, create a page on its
website, located at www.[agency].gov/digitalstrategy, to publicly report
progress in meeting the requirements of the Strategy in a machine-readable
format.

This memorandum shall be implemented consistent with
applicable law and subject to the availability of
appropriations, and with appropriate protections for
privacy and civil liberties.

The Director of the Office of Management and Budget is
authorized and directed to publish this memorandum in
the Federal Register.

THE WHITE HOUSE,

Washington, May 23, 2012