International Trade Administration: Although Progress Has Been Made, More Needs to Be Done to Deliver On-Line Export Information and Services. Final Inspection Report No. IPE-13213

摘要

The number of people using the Internet is growing at an astounding rate. In 1993, fewer than 90,000 people worldwide were estimated to be using the Internet on a regular basis, and those who did were primarily in academia or the government. By the summer of 2000, there were more than 300 million frequent on-line users, and within five years, the number is expected to pass the 1 billion mark. This exponential growth is accompanied by increasing expectations. As the public conducts more commercial transactions on-line, such as personal finance and banking, travel arrangements, and retail shopping, it also expects more on-line government-to-citizen information, transactions, and services. Technology, and the Internet specifically, are changing how the government conducts its business and how it communicates both internally and externally. In recognition of this, the Department of Commerce is planning to move from being a paper-based bureaucracy to a Digital Department, whereby it will effectively obtain, process, produce, and provide information in the medium that best meets the needs of its employees and customers. Early goals include providing electronic access to all Departmental forms, developing a Commerce Intranet site, and organizing the Commerce Internet home page so that customers can readily access information without having to understand how the Department is organized. Next steps include developing web-based internal administrative and business processes. This review examined how well the Department of Commerce is using the Internet to provide export promotion information and services to the public.