Progressive Policy Institute Decries Bush's IT Shortcomings

The Bush Administration has utterly failed to make a serious commitment to e-government-- i.e., improving the delivery of government services through digital information technologies (IT). As a result, the United States has lost its global lead on e-government, concludes a new report from the liberal oriented Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).

Apologists for the Administration might argue that the White House has had other, more important things to tend to than making good on the e-government IT initiative promised in 1999 by then presidential candidate George W. Bush, says PPI Vice President Robert Atkinson, author of the report. After all, there's the war on terrorism, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his followers.

"All of that might be understandable," Atkinson tells TPR, "except that the Bush Administration hasn't made much progress in using IT to improve homeland security -- and that's an area the Administration claims is a top priority."

How Much Time Does It Take?

As he points out in the PPI report, it has been more than three years since the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Still, the Administration has not yet completed the integration of the dozen terrorist watch lists currently spread over nine agencies, even though a top-level Administration official told Atkinson that this sort of integration can be achieved rather easily. The Administration has made even less progress in creating an integrated, systemwide terrorist information and analysis network of the kind proposed by the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, Atkinson says.

If all of this criticism of the current occupant of the White House sounds a bit political, it may be because it's coming from an organization that has ties to the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

"We're not part of the Democratic Party," explains Atkinson, "but we're certainly affiliated with the DLC," an entity that bills itself as an idea center, catalyst, and national voice for political reform. "I want to make clear that we don't have any ties to the [Kerry-Edwards] campaign or anything like that."

With respect to the PPI report, Atkinson says the facts speak for themselves. "We've laid out a pretty good case in the report that documents how the Administration failed to deliver on the promise of e-government," he says. "Of course, it's possible for some people to look at this Administration and see it as a glass half full, rather than a glass half empty.

"In any case, there is no way anyone can see this a completely full glass," he says. "We looked at a lot of the things that this Administration could have done but just did not do."

When George W. Bush first ran for president, he picked up on a PPI idea, recalls Atkinson. "It was a suggestion for the appointment of a chief information officer [CIO] for the entire federal government, along with establishing a $500 million-a-year interagency e-government fund.

"But if you look at how this Administration negotiated the E-Government Act, which was introduced by [Sen. Joseph] Lieberman [D-Conn.], the whole negotiation process revolved around the Administration's insistence not to appoint a national CIO," says Atkinson. "And then when you look at the money issue ... they asked for significantly less than they said they were going to ask for. Yet, they were certainly able to go to Congress and ask for multitrillion dollar tax cuts. They were certainly able to get $89 billion to fight a war ... But they haven't been able to make a very good case -- nor have they tried -- for a real enterprise-wide approach to e-government. I think it's fair to say they've done a few good things, but they certainly haven't done anywhere near the things they promised to do."

Broadband As Political Badminton

With respect to the FCC's recent broadband-related actions, Atkinson says the agency, with encouragement from the Bush Administration, has for three and a half years virtually ignored the broadband issue. "Then with less than three months to go before the election, all of a sudden the FCC decides to do something. This is laughable."

In Atkinson's view, broadband has become a policy shuttlecock in a game of political badminton. Unfortunately, the United States is losing the match.

"I'm really struck by what other countries are doing in this area," Atkinson says. "They've really sailed past the United States. For instance, the Japanese have this e-Japan strategy ... in which they intend to have 20 Mbps [of broadband access] connected to every home by 2005. Canada has its national broadband plan. So does the UK. Everybody has a plan in place except the U.S. --and that's because this Administration has decided to let the market deal with the problem."

The entire contents of the PPI report can be accessed on the Internet at http://www.ppionline.org/documents/EGovt_1014.pdf.

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