Of the more than 50 line agencies, about 80 percent had a Web site online as of Friday, according to the governor's office.
The Transparency Act of 2005, signed into law in June, forced the government to take a leap toward "E-government," toward a day when residents will have complete access to their government from their desks.
The act gave each agency 120 days to create a Web site and load it with information ranging from audits to leadership. The deadline to complete these Web sites was last Friday.
Speaker Mark Forbes, who introduced the act, said he's pleased with the progress the government has made in recent months toward that goal, even if there's more work to be completed.
In fact, he said, the Legislature hasn't even finished putting all of its information onto its Web site.
"The deadline occurred fairly close to the budget process, so even the Legislature's Web site, we've just allocated the budget (for the Web site), so we'll be getting that up ourselves within the next few days," he said.
Until recently, government agencies were all tackling the World Wide Web at their own pace. Agencies had to procure their own Web, Internet, and e-mail services. There has been no consistency in domain names or e-mail addresses.
This inconsistency was one of the problems the governor hoped to address when he recently hired a chief information officer, explained Joe Duenas, the governor's chief of staff.
"All of the agencies were doing IT (Information technology) at their own pace and at their own direction, using different software and service providers," Duenas said.
"That's one reason we hired Jim Lacson (as chief information officer) from the private sector. His function is to make sure these things are more streamlined, to coordinate things from the top, so the vision and direction remain the same at all agencies," Duenas said.
Lacson said one of his long-term goals is to get the entire government on a single domain-name system and e-mail system.
A recent move in this direction was a contract issued by the Department of Administration procuring Internet services for the entire government. The contract was given to IT&E.
Michael Mann, spokesman and information officer at the Guam Environmental Protection Agency, said the long-term goal of the move may be good, but it has thrown some agencies into disarray, particularly agencies which already had existing contracts for Internet service and had Web sites already established.
"The change in Internet service providers took us all by surprise and meant that we had to scramble to find ways to maintain those basic, essential services like e-mail and having a Web site up," he said.
Guam EPA had most of the Transparency Act's required information on its Web site by the Friday deadline, but Mann said the agency still is gathering some of the information.
Autor: Katie Worth
Quelle: Agana Pacific Daily News, 01.11.2005
